Zacharias Kunuk

The Fast Runner (2001) was named as the greatest Canadian film of all time by the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival poll.

Zacharias Kunuk was born in Kapuiviit (Jens Munk Island) on Baffin Island, Nunavut (then part of the Northwest Territories), Canada. In 1966, he attended school in Igloolik. There he carved and sold soapstone sculptures to afford movie admissions. As his skill improved, he was able to buy cameras and photographed Inuit hunting scenes. When he heard about video cameras in 1981, he purchased the basic equipment to teach himself how to create his own movies.

In 2002, Kunuk was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. His second film, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, in which he is a co-writer and co-director with Norman Cohn, is a co-production with Denmark. It premiered on September 7, 2006, as the opening film at the Toronto International Film Festival. In June 2007, Zacharias Kunuk filmed the rescue and return of his father, Enoki Kunuk, who was lost for 27 days in the Arctic tundra. Kunuk is the co-founder of the Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change Project, along with Ian Mauro of the University of Victoria's School of Environmental Studies. The goal of the project is to collect information from Inuit elders for a film about the Inuit perspective on the impact of climate change on Inuit culture and the environment. The project submitted a video to the United Nations for the 2009 COP15 Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change which was presented at the National Gallery of Denmark. As of April 2011, Kunuk is developing a project with Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond about the 18th century conflict between Cree and Inuit, which lasted almost a century. In July 2017, Kunuk joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as part of 774 new members invited that year. In March 2019, Kunuk was made a member of the Order of Nunavut, the sole member of the Order's 2018 class.