Anna Lambe on playing a selfish artist in Nyla Innuksuk's new TIFF psychological thriller

Iqaluit-born actor Anna Lambe is navigating darker, more complex territory with her latest role. Following her breakout in a reporter North, she stars as Yura Ivalu in In the Heart of the South, a psychological thriller directed by Nyla Innuksuk, who helmed the 2022 alien-invasion hit Slash/Back.

In the film, Yura is a rising Inuk artist in Toronto who mines a traumatic childhood experience for a potentially career-making film. When Sesi, an estranged friend who lived through the same trauma, suddenly reappears, everything begins to unravel. Part horror, part satire, the film asks thorny questions about art, ambition, representation and who gets to profit from a community's pain.

When Lambe read the script, she felt "freaking attacked and called out." She recognized her own privilege reflected in Yura's character—a woman who fits Western beauty standards, speaks in an "acceptable" version of Indigeneity and has had access to the industry in ways others don't. "I've always been conscious that I'm quite privileged. I have a good support system, and I don't make people too uncomfortable, so I've always had access in a way that not everyone does," Lambe said. Playing Yura's descent into paranoia, anxiety and insecurity required deep empathy. "I do not like this girl. Yura, make a good choice, please!" she laughed, recalling moments while performing.

Lambe has tackled drama in The Grizzlies, comedy in North of North, and mystery in True Detective. Horror demanded a different approach. "As an actor, you want a character to feel as real as possible—the goal is honesty in your performance. So diving into Yura's headspace and figuring out how insecure she is, how anxious she is about failure, how much she's suffocating herself, I had to find connection and empathy in order to justify her choices."

A central question the film grapples with is whether Yura has the right to tell the traumatic story she shares with Sesi, played by Zorga Qaunaq. Lambe and Qaunaq discussed ownership and perspective extensively while filming. "When you consider who has the right to tell a story, you have to dive into the nuances of how an experience can impact people differently," Lambe said. "Suffering isn't comparable, and all of our lived experiences and emotions are valid. But one of these characters went through much more because of what happened. For the other character to take that on, tell that story and benefit from it isn't fair, especially when that story is being performed for a largely non-Indigenous, white audience."

On horror as a vehicle for social critique, Lambe notes the genre's power for Indigenous storytellers. "You can lean into absurdity," she said. "That can be a useful world to play in because the humanity and dignity of Indigenous people is often treated as a question that can be debated rather than something inherent—which is absolutely ridiculous. So the ability to stretch reality can amplify just how whack it is to treat our lives as..." (her thought trails off in the original, capturing the filmmaker's point).

In the Heart of the South has its final TIFF screening on September 18.