BLOCKADE! traces five years of Indigenous resistance on Nehirowisiw and Innu territory, deep within Nitaskinan and Nitassinan (“Our Land” in both Nehirowisiw and Innu).

The film was made as a direct response to the dominant media narratives that followed the collapse of Québec’s Law 97. In the weeks after the law fell, coverage focused largely on political maneuvering and legal outcomes, while the Indigenous land defenders whose resistance made that outcome possible were barely mentioned—or erased entirely.

BLOCKADE! pushes back against that erasure. It documents the on-the-ground Indigenous resistance that forced the issue, asserting that it was sustained land defense—not institutional goodwill—that broke the law’s legitimacy. Released in the immediate aftermath, the film functions as a historical intervention: a refusal to allow that struggle to be rewritten, minimized, or claimed by others.

Much of the footage in BLOCKADE! was gathered as part of ongoing documentation for the feature-length documentary Defenders of the Forest (still in production), which expands on this resistance over time and situates it within a broader history of Indigenous land defense.

We invite everyone to download the film, screen it in your communities, and host your own screenings at home, in cafés, or local spaces.

Ready-to-print posters and materials are available in the shared folder to help organize community showings.

Filmed between 2021 and 2025, BLOCKADE is part of Amplifier Films’ ongoing work to support and document land defense and Indigenous sovereignty struggles.

🎬 Language: French with English subtitles
📅 Year: 2025
🎥 Directed by: Franklin López

👉 [Download the film]

Credits

Script, Production and Editing

Franklin López

Camera
Marie-Noël Arseneau
Émile Bureau

Mathilde Capone
Franklin López
Valeska Piciwkowi Tastapapi
Lisanne Pittikwi

Visual Researcher
Max Archambaud

Drone Photography
Émile Bureau
Franklin López

Music
Stefan Christoff
Toni Dimitrov
Jarrett Martineau
Gregor Quendel
szegvari
universfield

Made possible in part by a grant from QPIRG Concordia and by individual donations of supporters of Amplifier Films.