While this film would never get SPCA approval, every animal killed was used in true Inuit fashion; all the meat was consumed, and the skins were put to practical use.
The first Inuktitut-language feature film.
Was named the "Greatest Canadian film of all time" in the Toronto International Film Festival's 2015 poll of Canadian critics and filmmakers. In the 2004 poll, it had gotten the fifth spot.
The only Canadian film to win the Camera d'Or for best first feature film at the Cannes Film Festival (as of 2019).
Is considered by the filmmakers to be the first part of the "Fast Runner Trilogy", followed by The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006) and Before Tomorrow (2008). The three films don't follow each other narratively but rather are thematically linked, like Edgar Wright's "Three Colors Cornetto Trilogy" or Park Chan-wook's "Vengeance Trilogy".