Blood Quantum

Canada, Mi’gmaq reserve. A police car drives along an endless stretch of pine trees. Our minds immediately wander off to FARGO or to TWIN PEAKS with agent Hawk as the main character instead of Dale Cooper. Strange things are about to happen, Native American cop Traylor (Michael Greyeyes) doesn’t need to hear the Carpenter-ish score to know that something is up. This morning the freshly caught fish started flapping the Macarena and an enraged dog continued barking after having received a bullet to the heart. There’s even talk of odd incidents involving people… No quarantine – the reserve is already isolated – could prevent the outbreak of a pandemic that turns all human beings into rotting cannibals. Everybody, except Native Americans who are apparently immune to the deadly virus. What to do now: lend their fellow white folks a – thoroughly disinfected – hand or payback time for centuries of oppression? In the truest spirit of Romero’s flicks, Jeff Barnaby (RHYMES FOR YOUNG GHOULS) uses the zombie genre as a political pamphlet, in this case about the fate of his fellow Native Americans and the fear-mongering of the Trump administration. Or, in Barnaby’s own words: “Being native is a world of shit where you pay taxes to the people shitting on you”.