Stories of people struggling to bridge a mile-wide cultural divide may be a popular staple on the menu of Canadian narratives, but few recent examples boast the same sensitivity and intelligence as you’ll find in The Necessities of Life. Carefully wrought by director Benoit Pîlon, the Quebecois film has justly become one of the past year’s most celebrated movies both within our borders (it won the top prizes at the Montreal World Film Festival in September, was included in Canada’s Top Ten and was recently nominated for eight Genies) and beyond (Canada’s official submission for the Academy Awards, it was shortlisted for the best foreign film Oscar). It is the kind of work — subtle and unsentimental yet direct and moving enough to give it wide appeal — I wish this country produced a lot more often.

Nevertheless, the divide in question is a formidable one. Set in the early 1950s, the movie tells the story of Tivii (Natar Ungalaaq), an Inuk in the Far North who is diagnosed with tuberculosis by a doctor on a visiting hospital ship and promptly sent south to a sanatorium in Quebec. Separated from his family and unable to communicate with the concerned but condescending staff or his chain-smoking fellow patients, he is devastated by the effects of his isolation. Yet tentative connections with a nurse (Éveline Gélinas) and an orphaned Inuit boy (Paul-André Brasseur) help reintroduce him to the real necessities.

A veteran Quebecois filmmaker and documentarian who spent several years working for Inuit television, Bernard Émond wrote the screenplay in the early ’90s. When Pîlon was offered the script by Émond’s producer, he immediately recognized the tale’s value and relevance.

“I thought it was a beautiful story,” says the director in a recent interview when he and Ungalaaq were in town for the film’s Toronto premiere at Cinematheque Ontario. “I thought it was very touching, very simple yet profound. And even though it is set in the ’50s, there were themes that spoke about the society we live in today.”

Pîlon describes The Necessities of Life as a parable about cultural exchange. As he explains, “Tivii gives back to the boy the place where he comes from, while the boy opens the new world to Tivii. He starts to exist in the eyes of the others because suddenly someone can translate for him. All that, I think, is still meaningful in today’s world, with more and more immigration going on.”

The film derives much of its power and poignance from Ungalaaq, a sculptor and actor who got an unusual start in filmmaking when he and his friend Zacharias Kunuk sold enough of their carvings to buy some camera equipment in the early ’80s. That purchase kick-started the Iglulik-based film-and-video community that would eventually create Kunuk’s 2001 landmark Atanarjuat (a.k.a. The Fast Runner), with Ungalaaq in the title role.

Since Ungalaaq’s grandfather had experienced something very similar to Tivii’s trials when he was also sent south to be treated for tuberculosis, he felt a close connection to the story. Reading the script, he says, “I had a few flashbacks to my grandparents’ lives. But I didn’t want to stir up my personal thoughts so I shut my mouth to Benoit — it was only after we finished the film that I told him about my family experience. If I had said it before we made it, I think it might’ve confused things — I didn’t want to distract myself from the role.”

It was a wise decision, considering how fully Ungalaaq immerses himself in the part, employing a keenly naturalistic style of performance that both men believe is common for Inuit actors. “The way I see it is when they act, they hide it so well that you cannot tell that they’re acting,” says Ungalaaq.

Just as wise was Pîlon’s willingness to allow the whole film to follow the thoughtful pace of both the character and the actor. “I was always telling my crew that we were shooting this in Inuit time,” he says. “I wanted to respect his pace, his timing, because he’s the one who’s carrying the whole truth of the movie. It’s all through him — it’s through his looks, it’s through his face, it’s through the way he breathes. That’s what’s going to make this film real.”

In a sense, it became so real for Pîlon that the process was not unlike making a documentary. “It was important for me to always explain to Natar where I thought the character was in every scene,” says the director. “Then I would decide on what kind of movement I would do with the camera, rehearse that a little bit, then just let go. After that, it was just a question of observing him. He becomes like a real Tivii who I’m shooting.

“Aesthetically speaking, this was not like my documentaries because it’s a real fiction film,” he adds. “But I think that ethically, this is a documentary approach.”