Picture it: Two women on the run after an encounter with police goes bad. Reconciling their identities and relationship with each other. Foraging from the land and navigating big city life.
If this sounds like something you’d like to watch, make your way to Metro Cinema at the Garneau Theatre on April 15. The Metro is showing Nika & Madison, Eva Thomas’ solo directorial debut, for National Canadian Film Day and as part of Dreamspeakers International Indigenous Film Festival.
“We premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and since then, I think we’ve been to about 19 Canadian film festivals and maybe eight international film festivals, including one in New Zealand,” Thomas says, on the film’s promotional tour. In New Zealand Nika & Madison won best feature film at the Māoriland Film Festival. Now she’s excited to bring it to Edmonton for Dreamspeakers.
A brief history lesson on the festival: Dreamspeakers started in Edmonton in 1992, and had nine days of programming at four downtown theatres and performances in Churchill Square. Acting executive director Jessica Daniels says the festival has changed over the years — downtown theatres have closed, funding models have changed — but after delaying last year’s festival it’s back in a big way for 2026.
“The films are going to be at the Landmark Cinema downtown. We’ll have an artisan market in City Centre on the second floor, in a gallery space. We’ll have some live entertainment in the pedway adjacent to the artisan market,” Daniels says. “There’s going to be art on display at the Beaver Hills House Park with some local Indigenous artists.” April 18 will see the park lit up for Light Strikes, a multimedia presentation projecting animated Indigenous art onto the park’s surfaces and a teepee set up for the event. The presentation will also highlight the work of filmmakers on the park’s Aboriginal Walk of Honour, projecting snippets of their work as part of the show.
There are 31 films playing over the course of the festival, from April 16 to 19 in-person and streaming April 20 to 27 online. Daniels says the one she’s looking forward to most is Nika & Madison.
The movie is an expansion of Thomas’ 2023 short film Redlights, though she originally envisioned the story in 2018 as a feature film. As she developed her career as a director and producer she saw other filmmakers expand their short films into feature length productions. She decided that was the path to eventually get the story into the format she wanted. Seven years later Nika & Madison premiered at TIFF in 2025.
“I was inspired by the film Thelma & Louise — without a doubt — and that inspiration is weaved within,” Thomas says. “I wanted to tell a story about two Indigenous women, but who were not victims of the system, who had agency and power. What I really wanted to do was to create a journey that the audience would go on with these two women, that they would learn to care about them, learn to understand them, develop some empathy for them and root for them.”
Of the 27 festivals at which Nika & Madison has screened, Thomas has attended 21, only missing some because the timing overlapped. She’ll be at Dreamspeakers too, attending the screening at Metro Cinema and the rest of the festival.
Nika & Madison plays April 15, at the Garneau Theatre.
Dreamspeakers International Indigenous Film Festival runs April 16 to 19.
