Trivia

The claim that Allakariallak died of starvation in 1922, months after the film was completed, is untrue; he did not starve but likely succumbed to tuberculosis.

This film was selected into the National Film Registry in 1989 (the first year of inductions) for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was the first documentary to be preserved in the National Film Registry.

While modern thought is that it is unethical to portray staged scenes as documentary footage, Robert J. Flaherty at the time saw his project as documenting a dying way of life. Allakariallak, who played "Nanook," was really demonstrating how Inuk people had lived in the recent past. So while he had made the shift from harpoons to rifle-hunting in his lifetime, he was still able to demonstrate the older ways of life.

Despite being "the first modern documentary", most of it was allegedly staged. Allegedly, in real life, Allakariallak (Nanook) had regular contact with whites, lived in a modern house, and hunted with a gun. Robert J. Flaherty would later go as far as claiming Allakariallak died of starvation, when in fact he had died from tuberculosis, and that film was meant to show how Inuit lived before modern times. These are all just claims, however.

The film was sponsored by the French fur company Revillon Freres, which provided $50,000 for director Robert J. Flaherty's 16-month expedition halfway to the North Pole. Despite being rejected by five distributors, the film opened in New York City in 1922, after its success in Paris and Berlin, and grossed well over $40,000 in its first week.