Screens for Teens: Portraits from a Fire

This series of contemporary and classic films is specially curated for teenagers in and around Cambridge. The selection, including both short and feature-length films, is meant to provide teens with an opportunity to watch work focused explicitly on their experiences. Covering a range of topics, emotions, and nuances, these free films—depending on length and scope—will be followed by conversation with faculty from the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.

About today’s film:
Portraits from a Fire, 2021 (Photon Films; English and Chilcotin with English subtitles; 92 min.)

This award-winning, beautifully layered Indigenous film follows Tyler, a lonely teenager who spends his days filmmaking, vlogging his Indigenous Tsilhqotʼin community, and hanging out with his grandparents. His father is physically present but remains emotionally absent from Tyler’s life for reasons Tyler cannot understand; that is, until he meets Aaron—a mysterious, charismatic, and influential figure who encourages Tyler to showcase his most personal film about his mother’s disappearance to the community. This leads to a reckoning between past and future, life and death, and father and son.