Tkaronto, the first feature from Ottawa-born filmmaker Shane Belcourt, is a very personal one.

The film follows the lives of Jolene (Melanie McLaren), a Anishnabe painter, and Ray (Duane Murray), a Metis writer.

Jolene lives in LA, but has come to Toronto to interview Max (Lorne Cardinal), a prominent aboriginal elder.

Ray has come to Toronto to pitch his TV series, Indian Jones, while his pregnant girlfriend waits back home.

As the two meet and begin their playful relationship, a deep connection begins to form between them.

For Jolene, her struggle with her identity, a First Nations aboriginal in an urban landscape, and her spirituality, are painfully real.

Actress Melanie McLaren does admirable work here, creating a character whose loneliness, confusion and desire to belong cut deeply.

For Ray, the conflict comes when pitching his show. He begins to realize that he may be selling his cultural soul, as the ignorant TV executives try to rework his story for mass consumption.

As one executive remarks, “Your people are very hot right now.”

The back-and-fourth banter between the execs (played with arrogant glee by Jeff Geddis and Mike McPhaden) is both over-the-top comical and not too far off the mark, as Belcourt makes digs at Pierce Brosnan (who notoriously portrayed native activist Grey Owl in a made-for-TV movie) and the overall bastardizing of aboriginal culture for profit.

The pressing question on Ray’s mind is: What will my son grow up learning about his culture? What stories will he be told?

As Ray’s inner-conflict over whether to pull out of the project or not continues to haunt him, Jolene begins to reach out to Max for spiritual guidance.

In a particularly emotional scene, a teary-eyed Jolene sheepishly asks Max to teach her how to pray.

Jolene and Ray’s intertwining stories present two different aspects of a universal conundrum.

Can one maintain their cultural identity without compromising a part of themselves in this urban jungle? 

Admirably, Belcourt patiently allows the relationship between Jolene and Ray to progress naturally, much like Richard Linklater did with Before Sunrise.

Before the end, the deep emotional bond these two share will reach its breaking point.

The effect is heartbreaking.

It becomes clear this is not a film solely about the struggle to belong to a culture, but about the struggle to belong to one another.