Endless Cookie

Half-brothers Pete Scriver and Seth Scriver live in different parts of the territory known as Canada, and have spent the past eight years making a film together. This film. it tells their own story, and is crafted in such a way that it sometimes as if we’re watching it at the same time that it’s being made. In one scene, the animated version of Pete sits in an armchair which a cat is casually ripping to pieces, speaking on the phone with Seth, who is sitting at his family’s kitchen table as other characters wander in and out and a dog pulls off his sock, trying to eat it. if that sounds like something you can relate to, you’re in for a treat.

A contender for Best Documentary in the Independent Spirit Awards, Endless Cookie is something genuinely different from anything else that you’re likely to see at the cinema this year. It’s a rambling, constantly evolving film in which stories intersect and interrupt each other, sometimes trailing off only to return unexpectedly later on. Built around one large extended family and members of adjacent communities, it introduces everybody by name at the start, as they ride along in little trucks, one after another. It’s unlikely that you’ll manage to catch all the names, never mind who’s who –and that’s before we get to the horde of dogs running along afterwards, one of whom is identified only with question marks because nobody can remember who he is. It doesn’t matter. Thrown in at the deep end, you will develop a sense of who’s who, getting to know them as a unit, and that’s just fine.

To make them easier to remember, each individual has a distinct and, one might say unusual appearance, thanks to an exceedingly eclectic approach to animation. Though it’s all two dimensional, making simple use of colour and often looking hastily sketched, it’s wildly imaginative, full of detail and humour. There is a Cookie, with a large round chocolate chip face, though the title of the film comes from elsewhere. There’s a baby who looks like a spring onion, a teenager who is just a loop yet somehow manages to do things like pointing and laughing, and so forth. The weird thing is that when photographs are taken in the film and shown to us just so – live action, one might say, if anything were moving – it’s easy to see the resemblances.

The photographs have their own charm. There are assorted candid family snaps, kids making faces, a puppy on a child’s head, a bear relaxing on a couch. They’re not artistically arranged but they’re full of personality and warmth. In this way they resemble the family anecdotes which pepper the film. The half-brothers remember granny doing jigsaws and chopping up whales, making candy which they loved and which tasted awful. They remember a tepee going on fire, and building a new one. The hilarity of discovering that people in Toronto have toilets inside their homes. The time Pete got caught in his own trap and was in danger of freezing to death, not least because, when possible help arrived, he was too embarrassed to reveal his situation.

The brothers are interviewing other First Nations people to collect their stories, but Seth finds it difficult with lots of noise in the house. Cookie playing with her own recording toy. Her brother on his video games. The puppies under the stairs. They do their best despite this. In the course of the recordings, important issues are addressed. Land rights, and the theft of land by wealthy white people. Residential schools, like the one Uncle Rusty was sent to, kidnapped as a child on a trip to the shops, trapped there for years. There is all the horror here that such tales deserve, but also the matter-of-factness. Because they are commonplace. Because one cannot spend all one’s time being outraged when there’s just too much else happening in life.

A man talking to Pete mentions diamonds, in passing. His coffee cup interrupts. “Diamonds may be pretty but I’m hot.” It giggles, and there is an awkward pause. Life has a habit of throwing up things that are difficult to plan for.

Endless Cookie is not like anything else and yet it is very much like life, especially as large families experience it, all around the world. Its very specific setting highlights the ubiquitous. What is truly rare about it is the intimacy it offers, which gives all of its stories more power. Either you’ll run screaming early on or you’ll be drawn in and the world of the film will entangle itself with your own.

Reviewed on: 13 Dec 2025