maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore

This film follows Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier's wanderings in each of their worlds as they wonder through and contemplate the afterlife, rebirth and the place in-between. Spoken mostly in chinook wawa, their stories are departures from the Chinookan origin of death myth, with its distant beginning and circular shape.

Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Pechanga) was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington, and spent a number of years in California and Oregon. He studied and taught chinook wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. He received his BA from Portland State University in liberal arts and his MFA in film, video, animation, and new genres from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. His video work centers around Indigenous homeland and landscape, designs of language as containers of culture, and the play between the known and the unknowable. Hopinka’s work has played at various festivals including Sundance, ImagineNATIVE Media + Arts Festival, Wavelengths and Ann Arbor Film Festival.