A still from Endless Cookie by Seth and Peter Scriver, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Scriver Brothers Balance Surrealism and Authenticity in Documentary Endless Cookie

Film Interviews

“Pete hasn’t been to a movie theater in probably 40 years,” says Seth Scriver about his older half brother and co-director Peter Scriver. “The last time I remember was when we went to see Star Wars together when I was six or seven.” The two will be heading to the Egyptian Theatre in Park City this week — Seth traveling from Toronto and Peter from the isolated Shamattawa First Nation community in Manitoba — to see their film Endless Cookie premiere at Sundance 2025 on January 25. 

Seth Scriver, director of Endless Cookie, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute
Seth Scriver, director of Endless Cookie, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute

“Our nearest neighbor is 120 miles away,” Peter says about his home in Shamattawa, where he raised nine kids. The remote First Nation reserve is home to around 1,500 people and doesn’t have reliable access to clean drinking water. From his time as chief and magistrate, his experience hunting and trapping, and his role as a father and now a grandfather, Peter has collected countless stories, jokes and observations. “It’s usually only horrible news coming out of Shamattawa,” Seth says. “We wanted to show that the people who live there are cool and funny, but also [to] tell the rest of the world that there are lots of fucked up things going on.”

“We wanted to show that the people who live there are cool and funny, but also [to] tell the rest of the world that there are lots of fucked up things going on.”

The brothers first began work on what would become Endless Cookie, a combination of Peter’s storytelling and Seth’s animation, eight years ago. Formatted as a series of witty, wandering vignettes about Indigenous life in Canada, it grew organically from a few recorded conversations into a rollicking family portrait. “We kept getting interrupted because everyone lives in one house, so all the recordings were totally messed up,” Seth says. “It was super annoying, but it was also extremely hilarious. At a certain point, we just gave into it.” These fourth wall-breaking moments, such as a toilet flushing or a baby wailing in the background, don’t detract from the narrative — in fact, they draw the audience closer into the Scriver family.

Peter Scriver, director of Endless Cookie , an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
Peter Scriver, director of Endless Cookie, an official selection at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

The film addresses issues such as over-policing of Indigenous people through surreal anecdotes, like the time cops followed a trail of blood to Peter’s mother’s house, expecting to see a murder and instead finding a little old lady cutting up a caribou. “The places where I grew up and Pete grew up are similar in that there’s always lots of insane things going on,” Seth says. “Shamattawa and Kensington Market [in Toronto] are both actually very surreal places.” In another vignette, two anthropomorphic car seats listen to the radio talk about the disproportionate incarceration of First Nations people, as the car engine runs in the background. That scene, Seth explains, is a play on the “Idle No More” Canadian protest movement against legislative abuses of Indigenous treaty rights. 

Threading through unexpected tangents and dream-like sequences, Peter’s voice and dry humor is what grounds the film. “That’s part of our culture. We don’t really take anything seriously,” Peter says. “Like a joke a minute, you know?” Seth adds that many Canadians are accustomed to tuning out the First Nation issues that are repeated on the news, but taking a humorous approach and having kids involved in the film makes for a different angle.

“Shamattawa and Kensington Market [in Toronto] are both actually very surreal places.”

“Pete is still telling me stories that blow my mind,” Seth says. “I think I have, no joke, probably three or four weeks’ [worth] of Pete talking from over the years.” During our conversation, Peter shares a few Shamattawa tales that didn’t make the cut — how packs of wolves lure pet dogs out onto the ice to kill them (“The wolf tricks them into chasing him”), the time a kid showed him a photo he snapped of Sasquatch (“We have three different names for it, [from] before the word ‘Sasquatch’ was invented”), a memory of watching his grandson eat his own frostbite scab (“I eat my scabs every once in a while, too. One time I ate this whole ear jerky,” he laughs). 

Though the title sequence introduces 34 characters all riding one long skidoo — some depicted as objects like a ruler, a flower, a rubber band, a sandwich and, of course, a cookie — each person is distinct and singular. Seth’s animated portrayal of each family member “wasn’t random, even though it may look super random.” Across snow, ice and wind, Endless Cookie’s warmth radiates through the blistering Shamattawa cold.

Read more of SLUG’s coverage of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.