With a total of 62 films and videos at this year's Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival - now in its seventh year - it's safe to say that its appeal will be wide and local appetites will be satiated with only the best in Indigenous artistry. Here's a sneak peek:

Métis filmmaker Shane Belcourt's Tkaronto is the opening-night selection, a film filled with questions and thoughts about cultural identity that uses its very inquisitiveness as a jumping-off point for a very sensitive portrait of a romance. Director Belcourt will be in attendance, and Kevin Lee Burton's short, Writing the Land, will be precede its screening.

At the other end of the five days, the closing-night film is Marie-Hélène Cousineau and Madeline Ivalu's Before Tomorrow, winner of the Best Canadian First Feature Film award at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. Shot in a remote area of Northern Quebec, the film is set in 1840 and follows two Inuit tribes fighting for their lives over the course of a harrowing winter.

Finally dug up from obscurity and properly restored is 1961's The Exiles, a slice of re-enacted cinéma vérité about the lives of some young Native Americans in the Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles. The restoration was sponsored by Milestone Films, and co-presented by noted author Sherman Alexie and director Charles Burnett (himself no stranger to long-delayed releases, as his Killer of Sheep only saw distribution last year, after a full 30 years). Shown in 35mm on Nov. 21 at Cinematheque, this will undoubtedly be a major highlight and a further source of inspiration to many.

Older than America features Manitoba-born Adam Beach and other familiar faces such as Wes Studi in a suspenseful tale about a spirit haunting a Native American boarding school. More than a genre picture, the film delves into the concept of cultural genocide in schools of its ilk. It plays at the Towne on Nov. 20.

With a bent for spreading the filmmaking bug to the young, the WAFF continues its popular run of free Youth Workshops. The fest will also show by example at the University of Winnipeg on Nov. 20 with the premiere screening of an interracial adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men that's set in downtown Winnipeg. A significant achievement by the students of Argyle High School, this undertaking was sponsored by WAFF and supervised by six filmmaker mentors (including Darryl Nepinak, whose own short, Indian, is part of the Painting the Town Red shorts series on Nov. 22).

With documentaries, short films - both dramatic and comedic - and other noteworthy features (including Benoit Pilon's The Necessities of Life, a recent winner the Montreal World Film Festival), this survey barely scratches the surface. Be sure to check out www.aboriginalfilmfest.org to find out more about the films chosen for inclusion and for a complete screening schedule.

WINNIPEG ABORIGINAL FILM FESTIVAL
Until Nov. 23, various venues