Essays

In middle school, I walked out of a film at the 2011 Sundance festival. My stepmother and I went to see On the Ice (2011), a film by Andrew Okpeaha MacLean that focuses on teenagers living in Barrow, Alaska (later renamed Utqiagvik in 2016). She invited me along because I lived in Alaska for most of the year, admittedly a bit further south than where the story takes place. Both of us entered the festival eager to see if On the Ice represented life in the “last frontier.” However, after about thirty minutes, the movie took a dark and violent turn. Read More >>