With keen sensitivity and insight, Inuk mechanic Alupa Tulugak (Christopher Angatookalook) goes about his work in the engine room of the cargo freighter Adeawiktak, all while carrying on a clandestine, after-hours love affair with handsome cook Alex (Alexandre Landry). Yet, Alex is unwittingly bound to First Officer Michelle Comeau (Gabrielle Poulin B.), who uses her authority to extract sexual favors from her subordinate. As the ship takes its last run of the season through the icy waters of the North Atlantic, a shocking act of violence finds Alex dead, throwing the ship into chaos and immediately casting suspicion on Alupa. Hounded by the RCMP and unable to find his place in Canadian society, the Inuk man refuses to reveal what he knows, caught between the inevitable cruelties of settler law and the deep mourning he must now navigate. All the while he’s being guided by the spirit of the man he still loves, determined to keep those secrets held only between themselves and the vast, frigid ocean.

Deftly balancing the form of the classic murder mystery alongside more interpretive visual markers, acclaimed Acadian filmmaker Rodrigue Jean has created a potent, lyrical observation on how power and sexuality collide with race and class, played out against a national identity that prides itself on tolerance and progressive attitudes. Using stillness to create a devastating tension, Labrador — Autopsy of Silence is a haunting reminder of the elasticity of time and the ghosts that are always with us, moving among the spaces that separate this world from the next.—Cedar Sherbert