A Province-Wide Film About Indigenous-Led Watershed Stewardship

The Project

The Indigenous Watersheds Initiative was a first-of-its-kind provincial program that provided funding and autonomy to Indigenous communities across British Columbia to restore, enhance, protect, and monitor their watersheds. Communities chose their own priorities. The results were remarkable — and deeply local.

As the initiative came to a close, the organizers wanted to mark the work in a way that felt worthy of what had been accomplished. They chose a film festival: a live premiere event in Vancouver where the documentary Olam Films would direct would screen alongside short films made within individual communities.

This wasn't a recap video. It was meant to be the collective memory of an entire initiative — something that everyone involved could point to and say: this is what we did, and this is why it mattered.

The Challenge

The scale and diversity of the initiative posed the central creative challenge. Dozens of communities across British Columbia had been doing deeply local, highly specific work — work that mattered enormously to the people doing it, but that resisted easy generalization.

Any film that tried to represent all of it risked saying nothing clearly. Any film that narrowed its focus risked leaving people out, or worse, reducing a complex, community-driven initiative to a simplified narrative that didn't ring true to those who lived it.

The challenge was to find the thread — the deeper story that could hold all of it together without flattening it.

The Approach

Working closely with the client's communications team, Olam Films helped identify five communities across the province that together represented the geographic and cultural breadth of the initiative. Each became a chapter in the film.

We travelled on-site to each community, conducting in-depth interviews with dozens of participants — elders, technicians, band members, program coordinators — about the work they were doing to care for their streams, lakes, and watersheds. The goal was never to impose a narrative, but to listen carefully and find the story that was already there.

The result was a feature-length documentary structured as five distinct chapters, unified by a deeper theme: the enduring relationship between Indigenous peoples and the lands and waters they have always stewarded.

In addition to the main film, individual community short films were produced — standalone assets that each community could keep and use on their own terms.

The Result

The film premiered at a live screening event in Vancouver to a standing ovation.

Communities who participated came away with their own films — tangible, lasting documentation of work they had poured themselves into. The initiative's organizers had a capstone piece that genuinely honoured the scale and significance of what had been built across the province.

For Olam Films, this project represented something we care deeply about: being trusted to carry a story that isn't ours to own, and delivering something that the people at the centre of it recognize as true.

The Films

Full Film

What this project demonstrates

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  Large-scale, multi-location production — shooting across remote and culturally diverse communities throughout BC

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  Cultural sensitivity and relationship-building — earning the trust of Indigenous communities and their communications teams

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  Vision-to-screen partnership — taking a complex concept and delivering a finished film that exceeded expectations

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  Community-first storytelling — every subject felt heard, seen, and well-represented

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  End-to-end project leadership — from location selection and shoot planning through to premiere-ready delivery

From the client

“I can't say enough about my experience working with Ben and Olam Films. Ben supported us in bringing to life a short film focused on documenting Indigenous-led work happening across BC. We worked with multiple communities and shot on-location. It was our first time making a film, and Ben was an extraordinary support throughout the process. He helped us clarify our overall vision, while still ensuring that community members were empowered to tell the stories they wanted to tell, and that their stories were told right. He even went above and beyond to provide multiple communities with their own mini films, pro bono. Ben is a highly ethical storyteller and we hope to collaborate again in the future.”