Honoring the Story Before the Frame: Evan DeRushie on Mangittatuarjuk The Gnawer of Rocks and Stop Motion as Cultural Stewardship

In Mangittatuarjuk :The Gnawer of Rocks, fear is not spectacle. It is memory.

Premiering in the Sundance Film Festival Animated Shorts Program, the stop motion short draws from Inuit oral tradition to tell the story of two young women lured away from their camp by glowing stones and into the lair of a dangerous spirit. The film is tense, restrained, and deeply atmospheric, grounding its horror in myth rather than shock.

For animation director Evan DeRushie, the project was never about visual excess. It was about responsibility.

Stop Motion as a Collective Practice

Based in Toronto, DeRushie runs Stop Motion Department, a studio dedicated entirely to handcrafted animation. His work on Mangittatuarjuk The Gnawer of Rocks came through close collaboration with Inuit owned TechHut Productions and director Louise Flaherty, ensuring that cultural authority remained where it belonged.

“This wasn’t a project where we came in to reinterpret the story,” DeRushie explains. “Our role was to support it.”

That philosophy shaped every aspect of the production. Stop motion, by nature, is slow and collective. Sets must be built by hand. Puppets are physically touched and adjusted frame by frame. Decisions are made in the open, often with multiple collaborators present.

For DeRushie, that slowness creates space for listening.

Translating Oral Tradition Into Material Form

One of the film’s central challenges was translating an oral story into a visual language without flattening its meaning. Inuit stories are often carried through rhythm, repetition, and atmosphere rather than explicit explanation. The animation had to reflect that.

Rather than relying on exaggerated facial expressions or dialogue, the film uses texture, lighting, and movement to convey emotion. The puppets are intentionally minimal, allowing fear and tension to emerge from posture, pacing, and environment.

“The less you show, the more the audience leans in,” DeRushie notes.

Handmade garments, carefully researched materials, and tactile sets ground the film in a physical reality that feels lived in rather than designed. The rocks glow. The darkness presses in. The world feels old.

Fear Without Excess

Mangittatuarjuk :The Gnawer of Rocks does not announce itself as a horror film, but it understands fear deeply. The menace comes not from sudden shocks but from inevitability, from the sense that something ancient has been disturbed.

DeRushie points out that many Indigenous stories function as warnings rather than entertainments. They are meant to be remembered.

Stop motion, with its slight imperfections and visible hand, reinforces that feeling. The movement is deliberate. The world feels fragile. Every frame carries weight.

Collaboration and Cultural Care

Throughout the process, cultural consultation and collaboration were not treated as checkpoints but as foundations. DeRushie emphasizes that animation teams working with culturally specific stories must understand when to step back.

“There’s a difference between craft and authorship,” he says. “Our job was craft.”

That distinction allowed the film to remain rooted in Inuit perspective while still benefiting from the technical strengths of a specialized stop motion team. It also shaped the way the film was edited and paced, preserving silence and restraint rather than forcing momentum.

Sundance and the Power of Presence

Premiering an Inuktitut language animated short at Sundance carries significance beyond festival recognition. It signals space being made for stories that do not bend toward accessibility or explanation.

For DeRushie, Sundance represents an opportunity for audiences to encounter animation as something more than novelty or genre.

“This is animation doing what it does best,” he says. “Making something intangible feel physical.”

Mangittatuarjuk The Gnawer of Rocks does not rush to entertain. It waits. It watches. It remembers.

And in doing so, it honors the story long before the frame.

Mangittatuarjuk The Gnawer of Rocks screens as part of the Sundance Film Festival Animated Shorts Program. Kickin' It with Tyree