The Film

When she was ten, Lisa Jackson fled Toronto to live with relatives in Vancouver to escape her mother's depression, alcoholism and prescription drug abuse - legacies of the residential school experience. Now, sifting through her memories and her mother's letters, she constructs a portrait of a mother whose drive to love her daughter triumphed over her demons of addiction. Animation, childhood photographs and stylized recreations add the young child's whimsical voice to this moving, at times humorous, look at the director's relationship to her mother and native identity.

Suckerfish was funded through Picture This, a documentary initiative of BC Film and the NFB, Pacific & Yukon Centre

Length: 8 minutes