THE ELK is a 30-minute short documentary about the return of the Thompson Elk fountain to downtown Portland, Ore. The film will debut at noon on April 18, 2026 at McMenamins Kennedy School as part of the Portland Panorama Film Festival.

As protests consumed Portland, Oregon in 2020, the city removed a beloved elk sculpture for safekeeping. Now more than five years later, the elk is the first of the city’s damaged monuments to return, and the only sculpture without controversy. But in a city that never really stopped protesting, people remain divided over why the elk went away—and what it means for the dinged but refurbished symbol to finally return. Set in an American city reckoning with its symbols of westward expansion, the unfolding fate of the elk and other monuments tells the story of a nation divided over who and what belongs on a pedestal.

The film is directed by journalist Erika Bolstad of Portland, the author of Windfall: The Prairie Woman Who Lost Her Way and the Great-Granddaughter Who Found Her. The book was a finalist for the 2024 Oregon Book Award; her companion short documentary, To Be Rich, was supported by a 2022 Environmental Art Grant from the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation. To Be Rich was an official selection of the San Francisco Green Film Festival, the Wild & Scenic Film Festival, Catalyst Film Collective’s Rise Showcase, and the McMinnville Shorts Festival.

Contact Erika at makingmonumental@gmail.com.