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Frozen River
A financially strapped mother joins a Mohawk woman to smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States.
2008 · Directed by Courtney Hunt · 97 min · Drama · Crime · Screenplay in the scene database · 3 frames
Tagline
Desperation Knows No Borders
Plot
The film is set shortly before Christmas in the North Country of Upstate New York, near the Akwesasne ('Where the Partridge Drums') St. Regis Mohawk Reservation and the border crossing to Cornwall, Ontario. Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) is a discount store clerk struggling to raise two sons with her husband, a compulsive gambler who has disappeared with the funds she had earmarked to finance the purchase of a double-wide mobile home. While searching for him, she encounters Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham), a Mohawk bingo-parlor employee who is driving his car, which she claims she found abandoned with the keys in the ignition at the local bus station. The two women, who have both fallen on hard economic times, form a desperate and uneasy alliance and begin smuggling undocumented immigrants from Canada into the United States across the frozen St. Lawrence River for $1,200 each.
Ray's older son T.J. wants to find a job and help support the family so they can afford to eat something more substantial than popcorn and Tang. He and his mother clash over whether he should remain in high-school and look after his little brother Ricky or drop out to work. To make matters worse, T.J. sets an outside corner of the trailer afire with a torch in an attempt to unfreeze the water pipe. Lila longs for the day she will be able to reclaim and live with her young son, who was taken from her by her mother-in-law immediately after his birth.
Because the women's route takes them from an Indian reservation in the US to an Indian reserve in Canada, they hope to avoid detection by local law-enforcement. However, their problems escalate when they are asked to smuggle a Pakistani couple and Ray, fearful their duffel bag might contain explosives, leaves it behind in sub-freezing temperatures, only to discover it contained their infant baby when they arrive at their destination. She and Lila retrace their route and find the bag and the baby, which Lila insists is dead, but which she revives moments before being reunited with the baby's parents. The experience leaves her shaken, and she announces she no longer wants to participate in the smuggling operation. But Ray, needing just one more crossing to finance the down payment on her mobile home, coerces her into joining her for one last journey.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Written by: Courtney Hunt
- Cinematography: Reed Morano
- Edited by: Kate Williams
- Music: Peter Golub, Shahzad Ismaily
- Production design: Inbal Weinberg
- Produced by: Heather Rae, Chip Hourihan
Cast
- Melissa Leo as Ray Eddy
- Misty Upham as Lila Littlewolf
- Charlie McDermott as TJ
- John Canoe as Bernie Littlewolf
- Jay Klaitz as Guy Versailles
- Dylan Carusona as Jimmy
- James Reilly as Ricky
- Michael O'Keefe as Trooper Finnerty
- Mark Boone Junior as Jacques Bruno
- Betty Ouyang as Chinese woman
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English, French, Urdu, Mandarin
- Studios: Harwood Hunt Productions, Cohen Media Group
- Budget: $1,000,000
- Box office: $5,457,664
- Themes: trailer park, illegal immigration, human trafficking, border crossing, snow, undocumented immigrant, new york state, native american reservation, woman director, canadian border
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