On focusing in on the Canadian stories 

Phillip: We figured Canada deserves its own story. We all need to do a better job at telling Canadian stories for Canadian audiences. 

April: Also, because the literature in Canada to do with Canadian wilderness is very sparse compared to American [and Australian] research and literature on wilderness. 

On whether it was straightforward to ask what “wild” meant to people in Canada

Phillip: It depends on what language you used. In French, there is really no word for it. You have to use a couple of different words. In English there is. But what was more revealing was when we went to First Nation communities where that conversation became very challenging. […] When we used translators to ask that question in Cree, we were typically met with stares. There is no word in Cree for that. When we spoke to First Nations in Alberta or in the Yukon, the closest word we could have used was “home” or “peace” or many of the other words that were explained to us that fulfilled the same idea that “wild” does in English. Only, of course, completely different because whereas “wild” in English creates a separation between society and nature, in Indigenous languages that separation is of course non-existent and so it had to be a completely different worldview to arrive at the same idea.

On featuring their daughter, Autumn Vannini, in the film

Phillip: She started [traveling with us] when she was nine. When you hear “wilderness”, typically you see a white young man who is going out there to conquer it. We wanted to avoid that overly masculine, overly dominant way of conquering the wild. We wanted to travel as a family because we realized that a lot of people that experience these places do so in similar ways to us. And so from the very beginning, Autumn was part and parcel of what we wanted to do. So much so that when the project was finished, we actually asked her to do voiceover for In the Name of Wild. We decided that we would do it from her perspective.

April: Kids are very insightful in ways that, as adults, we often miss things that children or young adults see. And so she was always very willing to share her insights with us, which were really interesting from her perspective, right? […] She inspires some of our own thinking about things or made us think differently about some things.

On who they interviewed for Inhabited

Phillip: We wanted to cast a wide net. Because if we went to places and talked to only, say, ecologists or conservation agents, well, you sort of hear the same story over and over again. And we wanted to talk to anyone that would show us, from their perspective, what the place meant to them. Because the group was very diverse, the perspectives were also really diverse.