North of North showrunners Stacey Aglok MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril didn’t hold back when explaining what crafting their show was like.
The series, which launched Jan. 7 on CBC, follows a young Inuk woman named Siaja who spontaneously — and very publicly — ends her marriage. Her next challenge is to find a way forward in a small Arctic town where keeping secrets proves next to impossible.
It’s a synopsis that sounds somewhat straightforward. What complicated its creation was balancing what Aglok MacDonald and Arnaquq-Baril wanted to show about life in Canada’s northernmost territory against their logistical challenges.
“What we wanted to do was tell a story that felt more like how we experience our lives in the Arctic, which is bright — colourful,” Aglok MacDonald told CBC’s Eli Glasner. “The Arctic is cold for sure, but our experience of it is very warm, and very community-centric.”
Getting that lightness to shine onscreen was sometimes made difficult by their filming location: Nunavut. The logistical challenges were perhaps most obvious in constructing their sets, which were designed in locations far away from where they were actually used.
“There was an extra level of pre-preparedness that we had to do,” said Aglok MacDonald. “We had to build it in the South — see it, tear it down, put it in a plane, fly it up to Iqaluit.”
“It was like planning to shoot on the moon,” added Arnaquq-Baril.
Watch CBC’s interview with some of the show’s cast and crew in the video above. North of North is available for streaming on CBC Gem and broadcasts on CBC TV weekly at 9 p.m. ET. The series will launch on Netflix this spring.
