The stakes for survival are swift and absolute: Never say die.

Red Snow began as a dramatic feature film conceived by Canadian Metis artist Marie Clements. After winning the Women In the Director’s Chair Feature Film Award, a prize of in-kind services to help make the film, Marie began to build steady momentum around the project. As excitement for Marie’s vision grew, Red Snow evolved into a transmedia project that releases the deeper spirit of the film’s message around the importance of respect for the land, language, and how we learn to love and to survive. This one of a kind three-part project now includes a feature film, an interactive digital media component (Book of Snow) and a community outreach component that aims to bring communities together through shared virtual and real time experiences.

The Film

Dylan, a Gwich’in soldier from the Canadian Arctic, is caught in an ambush in Kandahar, Afghanistan. His capture and interrogation by a Taliban Commander releases a cache of memories connected to the love and death of his Inuit cousin, Asana, and binds him closer to a Pashtun family as they escape across treacherous landscapes and through a blizzard that becomes their key to survival.

Filmed on location in Canada’s Northwest Territories and the desert interior region of British Columbia (the Ashcroft Band Lands, and Kamloops), Red Snow paints a reflection of self that is distinct, breathtaking, and uniquely beautiful, forming a shared language of the people and the land. Reflected in the sky, in snow that can be dust, in a land that can be desert or tundra, a ski-doo or motorcycle, a face concealed or revealed, extreme cold or extreme heat, Red Snow heeds our ever-aching call to belong.

Over a rigorous 20-day production schedule, the Red Snow team worked in temperatures as high as +38 degrees and as low as -40 to capture the beauty of the land and the peoples of Red Snow. Featuring the talents of Tantoo Cardinal, one of the world’s most respected Canadian Aboriginal artists, new-comers to watch Asivak Koostachin, Samuel Marty, Mozhdah Jamalzadah, Miika Bryce Whiskeyjack, and Ishaan Vasdev along with Shafin Karim and Kane Mahon, Red Snow is written and directed by Marie Clements, and produced by Marie Clements, Lael McCall and Michelle Morris, with co-producer Jonathan Tammuz, executive producers Carol Whiteman and Giuliana Bertuzzi. The film is photographed by cinematographers Robert Aschmann (the desert) and Roger Vernon CSC (the arctic), with production design by Michael Diner and art direction by James Boatman; edited by Rafi Spivak, sound design by Craig Berkey (Darkest Hour), music composition by Wayne Lavallee, with primary casting by Judy Lee and Rhonda Fisekci.

Red Snow was made possible with the support of CBC’s Breaking Barriers Feature Film Fund, Telefilm Canada, the Women In the Director’s Chair Feature Film Award, the Canada Media Fund, APTN, the Harold Greenberg Fund, Creative BC, Film Incentive B.C., CAVCO, and the Northwest Territories Film Rebate Program.