Zorga Qaunaq is not a naturally intimidating person.
On the hit Iqaluit-shot sitcom North of North, the Inuk actor plays Millie, the kind of quirky, loyal, especially stylish supporting character who anyone would be proud to call their BFF, including the series’ lead Siaja (played by Anna Lambe). Qaunaq’s performance, which earned her a Canadian Screen Award for Best Ensemble Performance in a Comedy Series earlier this year, neatly draws from the Ottawa-based artist’s own people-pleasing tendencies. By her own rough estimate, she “might yell at somebody once every five years.”
Yet for her role in Nyla Innuksuk’s new film In the Heart of the South – just Qaunaq’s third onscreen performance ever – the actor had to get tough.
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Zorga Qaunaq, left, stars with Anna Lambe In the Heart of the South.TIFF/Supplied
Cast as Sesi, the estranged childhood friend of a rising Inuk filmmaker named Yura (Lambe, again) who suddenly resurfaces in Toronto to cause havoc in the director’s life, Qaunaq must embody a particular kind of sensual menace, chilling but alluring at the same time. To put it in the crass elevator-pitch language that Yura herself must deliver repeatedly to clueless white movie executives throughout the film, In the Heart of the South is like the showbiz satire of Robert Altman’s The Player meets the psychosexual thrills of Barbet Schroeder’s Single White Female. In other words, it’s a world away from the cozy comforts of North of North. So to prepare, Qaunaq tried her best to get her hands dirty.
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“Part of shaking off my own personality was that I tried to pretend to smoke. I was in the car one day with my brother and my partner going through the Tim Hortons drive-thru, and said, ‘Hey guys, I’m going to roll up to the window with this unlit cigarette hanging from my mouth. It’s going to look so tough!’” Qaunaq recalls with a laugh. “But then we’re driving up to the window and my heart is pounding. Why was I so terrified? I then had a huge epiphany about myself and this film – I had spent so much of my life thinking that I had to be this perfect little Inuk girl in order to be accepted by the world. Meanwhile, this Tims employee just wanted to give me my drink.”
If that Tim Hortons experiment crystallized Qaunaq’s creative approach to In the Heart of the South, it also helped develop the kind of once-in-a-lifetime big-screen performance that screams “breakout.”
In North of North, Qaunaq plays Millie, a loyal supporting character, seen here with Bailey Poching as Colin.Courtesy of CBC/APTN/Netflix/Supplied
In two weeks, the film will make its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it is destined to make waves for both Qaunaq’s searing work and writer-director Innuksuk’s uncompromising vision. This is a film that skewers contemporary Canadian culture with vicious glee while simultaneously maintaining a deep love for everything from supernatural horror to the Will Ferrell/John C. Reilly team-up Step Brothers. It is a bracing, fully singular work that the country desperately needs more of.
Yet In the Heart of the South is just one of a handful of new projects for Qaunaq. The night after Innuksuk’s film premieres at TIFF, Qaunaq will remain at the festival to mark the world premiere of her other new feature, the eco-terrorism thriller In Alaska co-directed by Canadian Vinnie Karetak (who also has a recurring role in North of North) and Dutch filmmaker Jaap van Heusden. And at the very same time, the highly anticipated second season of North of North will debut on APTN and CBC, with Netflix streaming the episodes later in the year.
Kaja Tirrul/JOBFlocks
So: How does Qaunaq feel about the back-to-back-to-back flashes in the spotlight?
“I’ve been putting off thinking about that until, well, now,” the 38-year-old says. “I love going to premieres, I love talking to people, and I love co-ordinating my outfits, being able to showcase Indigenous fashion. But I’ve also been trying to take a break from it all until September.
“I’ll check in with Anna to touch base, and the other filmmakers, to see how they want their work to be perceived and make sure everything is comfortable for them,” she adds. “Not that you need to do that, but it’s nice to have a unified front, because this is a pretty big deal to share these stories.”
While North of North broke boundaries for onscreen representation when it premiered in 2025, it also formed something of a nexus point for Indigenous artists – Qaunaq, Lambe, Karetak – that is now coming to fruition at TIFF. Although from Qaunaq’s perspective, that’s no accident.
Since Qaunaq's on-screen debut with North of North, more acting opportunities have quickly followed.jasper savage/CBC/netflix
“The film world is already really tiny, and then the Inuk arts world is already really tiny, so we already know each other or know somebody who knows somebody,” she says. “I’m a little shocked that I got the role, but a lot of it has to do with how we trust each other.”
Born in Igloolik, Nunavut, before moving with her mother to Ottawa when she was 10 years old, Qaunaq grew up with a deep love for the arts – illustration, painting, beaded jewellery, eventually tattooing – which sustained her creative side during her earlier career as an Inuktitut-language instructor at the Nunavut Sivuniksavut College in the Canadian capital.
“It was a diverse, fast-paced environment at the college, but once I went through a few rounds of that, I thought, ‘Oh no, is this it for the rest of my life? Another 30 years?’ I felt guilty because I felt bored. With that in mind, I accomplished safety, and I can go back to that if I want, but what I’d really like to do is be an artist. I didn’t have dependants, any children, so I could be financially risky,” she recalls. “I built up connections with my artwork, my tattooing. I couldn’t believe how much I could make by just being myself more. That was monumental in trusting myself, and then the auditions for North of North came out that year.”
Qaunaq: “I had imposter syndrome from the time they cast me to the first ‘cut’ they yelled on set.”Kaja Tirrul/JOBFlocks
Although Qaunaq had previously auditioned for an acting gig about a decade before, North of North was her first real experience through the anxiety-inducing callback rounds of a major production. And after five audition sessions, she finally landed the job – and even then, she still couldn’t believe that she belonged on a television set.
“I had imposter syndrome from the time they cast me to the first ‘cut’ they yelled on set. But then I found my superpower, and it felt like every cell in my body aligned with the universe and I was like, ‘okay, they made the right choice,’” Qaunaq says with a self-deprecating chuckle.
“But it was a lot of work on myself to get to that point. I had felt finances are never secure, careers are never secure. But if you live your life from a place of fear, you’ll probably die sooner because of all your cortisol levels. Life is just easier when you think it’s all going to be okay.”
Initially, In the Heart of the South director Innuksuk was reluctant to cast Qaunaq as Sesi, given that her work on North of North and her bubbly real-life persona were so vastly different from what she had in mind for the antagonistic character.
“But then I saw her audition tape and she didn’t look like the same person – her face, the way she was holding her body. I showed it to her after and she was like, ‘That’s not me!’ She was surprising herself,” says the filmmaker, who previously made the 2022 Inuit sci-fi thriller Slash/Back.
Qaunaq's character in In The Heart of the South is a completely different look and persona to how she is in real life.Michael Gibson/In the Heart Productions Inc./Supplied
“It was so wonderful to work with her at this particular time in her life, because the characters that she and Anna play are complicated when it comes to identity and how in Canada in particular that’s capitalized on,” adds Innukshuk. “With these social masks that we wear as Indigenous women, navigating different institutional spaces, there is a certain level of contortion that has to happen. All three of us are people-pleasers, but she is in this process of trying to remove the constraints we’ve put on ourselves. That’s exactly what Zorga has been doing for the last five years.”
While In the Heart of the South is an immediate dialogue with Qaunaq’s own personal history, the actor also found a deep connection with the themes of In Alaska, her other TIFF premiere.
Qaunaq plays a hunter in the upcoming film In Alaska.IJswater Films; Experimental Forest Films; Uuktumiaq Studios/Supplied
That film focuses on a depressed teenager named Woody (newcomer Leo Matthew Temela) who goes on the run after his suicide attempt accidentally damages an oil pipeline, with Qaunaq playing a hunter who helps foster Woody as he evades the FBI. But just as Woody, who has one Inuk parent and one white parent, struggles throughout the film with finding his rightful place in the world, Qaunaq – whose mother is white – spent years reckoning with the question of whether she was “Inuk enough.”
“I was shocked I got that role because I’m not a confident Inuk hunter lady, I don’t know how to handle a gun or fish, so I was like cosplaying her. But that identity was exciting to explore, because that’s something I lacked growing up in Ottawa,” she says.
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“I understood so much where Leo’s character was coming from, and seeing so many people feel disconnected. I learned that at the college, too. So many students from all over Nunavut and Nunavik, they all struggled with identity. They could be fluent in their language, but still have feelings of, ‘Am I doing enough to contribute to my community?’ If you’re Inuk, you’re Inuk – that’s it. People who care and value and support the community will accept you fully, and that’s a theme I pull out of all the projects I’ve been in so far.”
Kaja Tirrul/JOBFlocks
One of those projects is a film in development that Qaunaq hopes to co-star in, as well as mark her debut as a producer and co-director. Titled Inuks on Vacation, the comedy is another byproduct of the North of North creative team, with a script by series writer Aviaq Johnston and series co-star Bailey Poching attached as co-director.
“We’re still very early in the production process, and then we need to get funding as a co-production with Canada and New Zealand, but I love having my fingers in all the pies,” says Qaunaq, who just returned from the Maoriland Indigenous Co-Lab film development program on New Zealand’s Kapiti Coast.
“To step outside of being an actor and see how the production can be better in so many ways,” she adds.
“It’s a miracle that anything gets made, and a further miracle that anything’s good at all. But to play pretend professionally, that’s pretty sweet.”
In the Heart of the South premieres at TIFF Sept. 10; In Alaska premieres at TIFF Sept. 11; the second season of North of North begins streaming on APTN+ Sept. 1, before airing on APTN and CBC Sept. 8, with Netflix launching the season globally later in the year.