Endless Cookie (2025) is a feature animated documentary, directed by Peter and Seth Scriver, that follows two half-brothers —one Indigenous and the other white—on an adventure to create an animated documentary film for the NFG (a pseudonym for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB)). With a recently burned-down teepee needing reconstruction, the two brothers use this as an opportunity to work on the film together. As the recipient of an Explore and Create Grant from the NFG, Seth begins by interviewing his brother, Peter, his children, and other family members to gather research for the film.
The family, through oral histories, knowledge-keeping, and memory work, time-travels from the present in their secluded community of Shamattawa to Toronto’s city histories of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and into a near-dystopian future. Their memory trip meanders, flitting through bite-sized time capsule vignettes, from kitchen tables, jumping from one time period and place to the next, the train of thought is sporadically interrupted by family members shuttling in and out of the house, errand runs, and random family and friend drop-ins. The pacing of the film naturally follows the heartbeat of the family’s intersecting lives, while acknowledging the conditions that have shaped their identities and experiences over time.
Endless Cookie intertwines the personal with systemic issues that continue to oppress many Indigenous communities, while simultaneously satirizing these encounters; from the representation of apathetic settlers’ tuned-out car seat conversations on anonymous statistics pointing to the disproportionate rate of wrongful incarceration and suicide in Indigenous communities, the RCMP’s criminalization of traditional knowledge and cultural practices, to the bizarre pseudo-supernatural TV programming that morphs into folklore territory, threading back into land rights claims and settlements. The film, with its distinctive approach to narrative storytelling and unique animation, generates a bizarre, surrealist style reminiscent of Duncan Trussell and Pendleton Ward’s mini-series Midnight Gospel (2020), while navigating complex topics with goofy, offbeat humour, balancing them with poignant insights on trauma, loss, and resilience.
Endless Cookie is a multi-generational family portrait that makes space for and holds each lived experience while recognizing the harms done in the past, and creating pathways to possible futures for the next generations.
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