100 minutes – Drama, Environment issues, First Nations,
Language: English
Festival release date: September 10, 1991 (Toronto International Film Festival)
DVD release date:
Production company: Cinexus Capital Corporation
Canadian distributor: Northern Arts Entertainment

Clearcut, based on the novel by M.T. Kelly, attacks the smug liberal pieties of so many movies about racial issues by daring to suggest that sometimes action, and violent action, speaks far more eloquently than words. And words are what its central character, a Toronto attorney representing a native community in a logging dispute, can’t seem to stop spewing. Even when kidnapped by a sinister Indigenous man (played terrifyingly by Graham Greene) determined to mete out a little overdue payback to white society, our “hero” (Ron Lea) keeps on trying to do what it is he’s been trained to do at least since law school: negotiate, reason and compromise. But that isn’t working this time.

The film’s director, Ryszard Bugajski, was born in 1943 in Warsaw, Poland abd passed away in Warsaw on the 7th of June 2019.