Our Grandmother The Inlet
Director: Jaime Leigh Gianopoulos
Co-Director: Kayah George
Director of Photography: Farhad Ghaderi
About the project
Spoken in English and hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓.
A short poetic documentary film featuring Kayah George, portraying the hardships of dealing with personal traumas and being an urban indigenous youth while holding love and intrinsic connection to the water and inlet known as their oldest grandmother in the Tsleil-Waututh Nation.
Photographs by Charlie Hannah and Soloman Chiniquay
Jaime Leigh Gianopoulos
Jaime Leigh Gianopoulos (she/her) is a director and editor based on the west coast. Jaime Leigh’s projects primarily concern the empowerment of women, social and environmental justice. Jaime Leigh is a recent winner of the ‘Hot Doc’s Cross Currents Doc Fund’ (2021) with co-director Kayah George for their documentary film ‘Our Grandmother the Inlet.’ The film is currently in post production, and the team will be launching an impact campaign and legal case to demand the rights of nature for the Burrard Inlet in partnership with ‘Sacred Trust’ led by the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. Jaime Leigh was one of 5 prominent emerging filmmakers selected for DOC BC’S Breakthrough Program (2022) with her short to feature documentary film ‘Ask The Plantain.’ The short version of the project received funding from ‘The Canada Council for the Arts’ February (2022).
Kayah George
Kayah George ‘Halth-Leah’ proudly carries the teachings of her Tulalip and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She is a young Indigenous leader, scholar, and activist. Kayah worked with Sacred Trust and Greenpeace, and traveled globally speaking on Indigenous and environmental issues, most notably COP21-Paris and Garma-Australia and more recently writing an op-ed for Teen Vogue, making it her second time being featured in the magazine. Kayah recently moved to Vancouver from Tulalip to study the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) language at Simon Fraser University full time while traveling and continuing to be an advocate for environmental, social justice, and Indigenous women’s rights.