Joy Keeper

Ruthless Souls follows Jackalope “Jackie” Cambell, a tough as nails Ojibwe artist born and raised in the strange land of Winnipeg, Manitoba. On the one year anniversary of her partner’s tragic death due to complications from gender affirming surgery, she's back at work, she only drinks and smokes up “on the regular” instead of a “concerning amount daily.” It’s all gotta go up from here, right? Wrong.

A police constable guns down a First Nations chief one snow night in Winnipeg, a tragedy that will impact the community for years to come.

Jesse Threebears is a troubled Native-American teen who has been tossed from one foster home to the next since his mother died when he was an infant. Finally, he is taken in by his grandfather who, after a ten year stint in prison, is living on the reservation. With the help of his grandfather and several others who live on the reservation, Jesse begins to learn about his heritage and how to come to terms with his troubled life.

Part of the Daughters of the Country series, this film, set in the 1850s, unfolds against the backdrop of the Hudson's Bay Company's monopoly of the fur trade. In protest, some Métis engage in trade with the Americans. Madeleine, the Métis common-law wife of a Hudson's Bay Company clerk, is torn between loyalty to her husband and loyalty to her brother, a freetrader. Even more shattering, a change in company policy destroys Madeleine's happy and secure life, forcing her to re-evaluate her identity.