
The Necessities of Life
2008-08-25 · 102 min · ★ 7.5
In 1952, an Inuit hunter named Tivii with tuberculosis leaves his northern home and family to go recuperate at a sanatorium in Quebec City. Uprooted, far from his loved ones, unable to speak French and faced with a completely alien world, he becomes despondent. When he refuses to eat and expresses a wish to die, his nurse, Carole, comes to the realization that Tivii's illness is not the most serious threat to his well-being. She arranges to have a young orphan, Kaki, transferred to the institution. The boy is also sick, but has experience with both worlds and speaks both languages. By sharing his culture with Kaki and opening it up to others, Tivii rediscovers his pride and energy. Ultimately he also rediscovers hope through a plan to adopt Kaki, bring him home and make him part of his family
Trailers are previews, not full movies.
No authorized playback source configured. Use the legal watch options below.
Production details
- Directors
- Benoît Pilon
- Production companies
- Téléfilm Canada, Astral Media, Société Radio-Canada, Super Écran, APTN, ACPAV, SODEC
- Countries
- Canada
- Status
- Released
Top Cast
Natar UngalaaqTiivii
Éveline GélinasCarole
Louise MarleauSoeur Luce
Guy ThauvetteDr. Montpetit
Antoine BertrandRoger
Vincent-Guillaume OtisJoseph
Denis BernardPère Millaire
Luc ProulxL'horloger
Frédérick BouffardPatient agonisant
Jacques-Henri GagnonL'archevêque
ÉlisapieMère inuk maladeTitle information and images are supplied by TMDb. Explore our discovery guide for advice on comparing metadata and legal viewing options.
Where to watch
Availability provided by JustWatch via TMDb. Offers can change. Provider links are listed on TMDb; full playback requires a separately authorized source.
Streaming
Philo, AMC Plus Apple TV channel, AMC+ Amazon Channel, AMC+ Roku Premium Channel, AMC+, Sundance Now
Rental
Apple TV Store
Purchase
Apple TV Store
View authorized watch options on TMDbSeasons & episodes
Recommendations

At the end of WWII, Jimmy Picard, a Native American Blackfoot who fought in France, suffers from unexplainable symptoms and is admitted to a military hospital. When doctors suspect schizophrenia, an eccentric psychoanalyst takes up the case and starts a conversation with the veteran.

Suzanne Simonin describes her life of suffering in letters. As a young woman she is sent to a convent against her will. Since her parents cannot afford the dowry required for a marriage befitting her rank they decide she must instead become a nun. Although a kind and understanding Mother Superior helps her to learn the convent’s daily routine, Suzanne’s desire for freedom remains unabated. When the Mother Superior dies, Suzanne finds herself faced with reprisals, humiliation and harassment at the hands of the new Abbess and the other Sisters. For many years, Suzanne is subjected to bigotry and religious fanaticism. (Berlinale.de)

With the aid of a fellow Auschwitz survivor and a hand-written letter, an elderly man with dementia goes in search of the person responsible for the death of his family.

Three people — a blue-collar American, a French journalist and a London school boy — are touched by death in different ways.

They are the perfect French haute bourgeois couple: Paul is a respected surgeon and Lucie cooks and gardens exquisitely. But now, in the autumn of his life, Paul can’t resist the lure of an ambiguous and dangerous relationship with a mysterious young woman. Might there be something sinister behind the roses delivered to his office and the “chance” meetings?

The dialogue-less film follows the major life stages of a castaway on a deserted tropical island populated by turtles, crabs and birds.

Ellesmere Island, northern Canada, 1908. Josephine, a brave but naive woman, embarks on a dangerous journey through inhospitable regions in search of her husband, the explorer Robert Peary, who tries to find a route to the North Pole.

A young Montreal advertising executive, converted to a Provençal shepherd, has various misadventures with a civil servant who has cavalierly quit her job.

A young half-Navajo convict dying of cancer forces a yuppie doctor to drive him to a magic healing lake.

Housed in a shelter for young mothers, Jessica, Perla, Julia, Ariane, and Naïma, all of whom have grown up in difficult circumstances, struggle to obtain a better life for themselves and their children.

In the snowy seaside town of Sokcho, 25-year-old Soo-Ha works at a guesthouse. She drifts between her mother’s fish stall and her boyfriend until a French artist’s arrival stirs questions about her identity. As winter deepens, Soo-Ha and the artist form an unspoken connection through food and art.

A widower maintains a memorial room filled with his late wife's belongings. When fire destroys it, he transforms a chapel into a new shrine to preserve her memory.

A privately-financed scientist and his colleagues hire an ex-Navy officer to conduct an Alaskan submarine expedition in order to prevent a Red Chinese anti-American plot that may lead to World War III. Mixes deviously plotted schoolboy fiction with submarine spectacle and cold war heroics.

Roméo and Juliette are two young actors. They fall in love at first sight, move in together and make a baby. A love story and the founding of a home like millions of others. Except that their little boy, Adam, behaves abnormally. The young parents try hard to persuade themselves that everything is okay but, with the passing of time, they cannot delude themselves anymore: their son has a problem. From now on, war is declared. A war against illness. A war against Death. A war against despair.

Pete Bell, a college basketball coach is under a lot of pressure. His team isn't winning and he cannot attract new players. The stars of the future are secretly being paid by boosters. This practice is forbidden in the college game, but Pete is desperate and has pressures from all around.

After leaving a wealthy Belgian family to become a nun, Sister Luke struggles with her devotion to her vows during crisis, disappointment, and World War II.

Juliette goes back in her hometown to spend some time with her family. She finds herself between a loving but moody father, a New Age mother, a sister in the midst of an existential crisis, and a grandmother slowly losing her mind. Buried memories and family secrets rise to the surface in this sweet, tender and sometimes extravagant family portrait.

The titular adventurer, after defying his parents to go to sea, survives a shipwreck and becomes a castaway on a deserted island for nearly thirty years, learning to build a new life from scratch, discovering companionship with a native man he names Friday, and eventually returning to civilisation a changed man, finding wealth and new challenges.

A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the lifecycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.

In an attempt to move on from the death of Paul, the love of her life, Korine leaves Paris to undertake a project in Mongolia. But after meeting the shaman, Oyun, her trip takes a different direction. Korine has a rare gift that Oyun intends to unveil. She agrees to initiate herself in the practice of Shamanism, leading her to discover an ancient and forgotten culture, but most importantly herself.
Similar titles

Story of the early life of genius and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman.

Based on a local legend and set in an unknown era, it deals with universal themes of love, possessiveness, family, jealousy and power. Beautifully shot, and acted by Inuit people, it portrays a time when people fought duels by taking turns to punch each other until one was unconscious, made love on the way to the caribou hunt, ate walrus meat and lit their igloos with seal-oil lamps.

An unhappy young couple visit the infamous Kellogg spa in Battle Creek, Michigan while a young hustler tries get into the breakfast-cereal business and compete against John Kellogg's corn flakes.

A celebration of love and creative inspiration takes place in the infamous, gaudy and glamorous Parisian nightclub, at the cusp of the 20th century. A young poet, who is plunged into the heady world of Moulin Rouge, begins a passionate affair with the club's most notorious and beautiful star.

Out of prison after a five-year stretch, jewel thief Tony turns down a quick job his friend Jo offers him, until he discovers that his old girlfriend Mado has become the lover of local gangster Pierre Grutter during Tony's absence. Expanding a minor smash-and-grab into a full-scale jewel heist, Tony and his crew appear to get away clean, but their actions after the job is completed threaten the lives of everyone involved.

Three girls meet by chance in a hospital. Struggling to come to terms with their fate, they all look back on a decisive moment in their life: Sara, a professional swimmer relentlessly urged on by her ambitious father, was deprived of her only real chance of happiness. Mette has left her deeply religious family, finding it too hard to bear that they have accepted her fate while she hasn't. And Stephanie has brutally rejected her boyfriend in fear of being rejected herself. Although their stories are very different, the three girls are brought together in their search for love and companionship. Based on the Oscar nominated short fiction »At Night«

Sickness. Chaos. Death. As the Quarantine Zones fill, bodies pile in the streets. Society crumbles to a wasteland. In the house of Sean and Avery, two do-gooders holding onto desperate hope, survivors find comfort in their final days. Yet no sanctuary of brick and plastic can protect the mind, and Sean finds himself forced to make the ultimate choice as the disease seeps into his home and makes monsters of its inhabitants.

A bush pilot in nothern Canada who with the aid of modernity thinks he can handle it all & knows it all. After reluctantly agreeing to transport a local indian girl to a medical facility his light plane crashes & they have to survive whilst finding their way back to civilization. Along the journey the man finds a new respect for the native ways as they battle to survive the elements.
Dr. John Wright a poor but promising young physician is influenced by his selfish wife, who was raised in luxury, to sell his breakthrough serum to a group of shady businessmen. That decision eventually begats tragedy and ruin for them all. Ultimately though there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

In 2032 an eight-year old boy, displaced by global warming, fends for himself as an environmental refugee in a hostile northern metropolis. Haunted by memories of flooding that left him homeless and orphaned, the boy forms an unexpected friendship with an Inuk ice carver who helps him confront his past.

A doctor explains to his children the dangers of tuberculosis, what it is and how to prevent against contracting it.

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

In 1896, three survivors of a whaling ship-wreck in the Canadian Arctic are saved and adopted by an Eskimo tribe but frictions arise when the three start misbehaving.

Ellesmere Island, northern Canada, 1908. Josephine, a brave but naive woman, embarks on a dangerous journey through inhospitable regions in search of her husband, the explorer Robert Peary, who tries to find a route to the North Pole.

Life in 1847 Paris is as spirited as champagne and as unforgiving as the gray morning after. In gambling dens and lavish soirees, men of means exert their wills and women turned courtesans exult in pleasure. One such woman is Marguerite Gautier, who begins a sumptuous romance with Armand Duval.

In a tuberculosis-clinic a young patient steels the hearts of her fellow patients.

A Danish teacher takes a job in Greenland and tries to overcome the animosity of the tight-knit locals through a series of errors that help him embrace the snow-covered life.

A young man finds himself attracted to a cold and unfeeling waitress who may ultimately destroy them both.

Two physicians, one old and one young, fall in love with the same woman, Juliette, a quixotic hairdresser. First, she is with Raoul, the older one; then passion for Clément, the younger doctor, takes over. Raoul fights back, playing on Clément's guilt and Juliette's lack of self-assurance; then, Clément makes his case to Juliette, abandons his fiancée, and takes her to the provinces where he sets up practice and asks her to have a baby. She panics and abruptly leaves Clément, taking up with Raoul again. When she contracts Hodgkin's disease and the treatment does no good, Raoul believes she has the malady of love. Is there a cure?

An Inuit hunter camped out in the Arctic wilderness discovers that it is not just the extreme elements that threaten his survival.