Frozen River (2008)
Frozen River is a 2008 drama film written and directed by Courtney Hunt (in her full-length directorial debut). The film stars Melissa Leo and Misty Upham as working class women who turn to illegal immigrant smuggling to make ends meet.
The film won the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
In an interview Hunt conducted shortly before the film’s nationwide release, she gave some insight into the roots for the film’s prevalent theme of a mother’s love for her children being a culturally universal trait. She admitted that the most important moment in her life was the birth of her daughter and how that moment made all of her other goals in life lesser priorities. By showing how such intimacy knows no bounds, culturally or socially, Hunt said that she hoped her film would enable audiences to break down their assumptions about others around them.
Plot
The film is set in the North Country of Upstate New York, near the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation and the Canadian border.
Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) is struggling to make a living and raise two sons with her husband. She is working at a discount store when her husband runs off and takes the family’s life savings with him. In searching for her husband she meets Lila (Misty Upham), a Mohawk. The two women, who have both fallen on hard economic times, form a desperate alliance and start to support their family by trafficking illegal Chinese immigrants from Canada into the United States, across the frozen St. Lawrence River. Ray’s oldest son, T.J. (Charlie McDermott), tries to be the man of the family, and the two clash over what he should do, stay in school or drop out and try to find a job to help raise his little brother, Ricky (James Reilly).
Production
Courtney Hunt had a hard time getting any backers to join the project. Then at the FilmColumbia 2003 Film Festival in Chatham, New York, she had a conversation with Marc Blandori (director of photography) and Melissa Leo, who both signed on to do the project.
The film was originally done as a 15-minute short film, with Pakistani immigrants, and was shot at Akwesasne (the Mohawk name for the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation), near Massena, New York. It made its premier at the New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, shown in early October 2004. It was then at the FilmColumbia 2004 Film Festival, in late October.
After the 15-minute version was completed, Hunt then had it shown at several festival screenings and shopped it to producers for funding a full-length feature film.
The full-length movie was filmed over 24 days in March 2007, on location in Clinton County, New York, in the area around Plattsburgh and Beekmantown, New York, in freezing temperatures.
Hunt sold the rights of the film to Sony Pictures Classics for little more than the cost of producing it, less than $1 million.
Awards and Nominations
- Frozen River was nominated for 6 Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Film, and Best Director. Melissa Leo won the award for Best Actress.
- The film also won the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
- It was selected as a top film of 2008 by the American Film Institute.
- The film received two Academy Award nominations: best actress for Melissa Leo, and best original screenplay for Courtney Hunt.
MSNBC commentator Courtney Hazlett, in criticizing the Academy Awards for honoring less-known movies, called the film “obscure” for “elite, effete” viewers that “wouldn’t make great television the night of the Oscars.”
Cast & Credits
- Directed by: Courtney Hunt
- Produced by: Chip Hourihan, Heather Rae, Harwood Hunt Productions (company), The Cohen Media Group (company)
- Written by: Courtney Hunt
- Starring: Melissa Leo, Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott, Michael O’Keefe, Mark Boone Junior
- Music by: Peter Golub, Shahzad Ali Ismaily
- Cinematography: Reed Dawson Morano
- Editing by: Kate Willams
Other Information
- Distributed by: Sony Pictures
- Release dates: January 18, 2008 (Sundance Film Festival); August 1, 2008 (limited release)
- Running time: 97 minutes
- Country: United States
- Language: English
- Budget: <$1,000,000
Links
- Frozen River Official site. – SonyClassics.com
- Original Screenplay. – Sony Classics. – (Adobe Acrobat *.PDF document)
- Frozen River at Allmovie
- Frozen River at the Internet Movie Database
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