Dene filmmaker Kelvin Redver’s Cold Road opens on Friday, Feb. 9
Upper River Valley film buffs can view the acclaimed Indigenous thriller Cold Road all this week in Woodstock.
Atlantic Cinemas will screen the modern Indigenous thriller, written and directed by Dene filmmaker Kelvin Redvers and starring Metis-Cree actress Roseanne Supernault, from Friday, Feb. 9 until Wednesday, Feb. 15. Showtimes are 7 p.m. each night, with matinee viewings at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
The film follows an Indigenous woman and her dog on a frozen highway in the remote Canadian North, who find themselves hunted by a stranger in a big rig.
Tracy, played by Supernault, is on a 12-hour road trip with her dog Pretzel as she tries to get home to see her dying mother.
Each mile takes Tracy further from civilization, safety and warmth. She’s alone on the road except for a truck driver following her.
A big rig starts to toy with her, like a cat with a mouse.
When Tracy realizes she’s being stalked, it’s too late to turn back—the temperature drops. Night’s coming. She has no choice but to fight for her life.
Redvers said the pulpy thrillers of the ’70s and ’80s inspired him to write and direct a modern, Indigenous-based take on the genre.
Film critic Chris Knight compared it to the ’70s television movie classic “Duel,” by the young Steven Spielberg. Duel is considered by many to be one of the best TV movies of all time.
He noted Duel spawned several imitators over the years, with Cold Road the latest and a “good one” because of Redver’s choices in script and direction.
The native of Hay River, NWT, set the film Canada’s far North where, as Knight notes, the freezing temperature, ice and environment become characters as dangerous as the madman in a semi-truck.
Knight praised Supernault’s performance and described Cold Road as “an excellently paced thriller, and yet another addition to a rapidly growing canon of exciting, Indigenous genre filmmaking.
