When Cold Road opens in Hay River, it’ll warm its director’s heart

Kelvin Redvers sat in Hay River’s theatre as an eight-year-old and fell in love with movies. Now, one of his own – shot in the NWT – is about to open there.

Cold Road is what Redvers calls a pulpy thriller seen through a northern lens, a tale of an Indigenous woman being pursued by a semi truck across the territory’s highways.

To get the shots for a climactic chase sequence, he and his crew closed down NWT Highway 6 then set to work crashing a semi truck and a car into each other.

But for all that he got to include heart-racing stunts filmed outside the places he calls home, Redvers says the movie is also about issues Indigenous women know all too well – vulnerability, isolation, danger.

“It’s an intense movie. We can talk about the fun and the stunts and stuff, but it delves into some real themes: Indigenous women and the kind of stuff that we know happens in the real world. It has those elements, and also it packs an emotional punch,” Redvers told Cabin Radio from Vancouver, where the movie premieres on Monday evening.

On Facebook: Follow Cold Road

Cold Road made earlier, unofficial appearances in Yellowknife and Hay River in late 2023, screenings that featured an unfinished audio mix. The movie returns to Hay River on January 26, when the final version opens at the Riverview Cineplex.

“I started going to that movie theatre when I was eight years old and my love of movies was grown in that theatre,” said Redvers.

“To have it play there is pretty special, in a way that’s hard to put into words.”

Below, read a transcript of our conversation with Redvers as he prepared for the movie to open. You can hear the full interview on Afternoons at the Cabin after 1pm on Monday, January 15.

---

This interview was recorded on January 12, 2024. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ollie Williams: Cold Road’s premiere happens on Monday evening in Vancouver, is that right?

Kelvin Redvers: That’s right. After 20 years of being a filmmaker, Monday is the day where my first feature film is officially premiered and finished, ready for the world. It wasn’t quite done in Yellowknife and Hay River, but now it’s finished and completely done.

Let’s just explain that. You screened the movie in those places a month or two ago but it was a work in progress at the time.

Yeah, we hadn’t completely finished the audio mix. That was our first chance to sit and listen to it in the theatre and we’re like, “OK, we can improve these one or two things.” And so that’s what we did. Now it’s ready to be screened here and soon in theatres all over Canada.

What do people need to know about this movie? Introduce them to Cold Road and what we’re going to see.

Cold Road is a modern Indigenous thriller directed by me. The logline for the movie is: “On a snowy, remote highway in the middle of nowhere, an Indigenous woman and her dog are hunted by a stranger in a semi truck.” And so if that logline makes you feel a little spooky, that’s exactly the goal. It is designed to be a thriller, especially inspired by pulpy thrillers from the 70s and 80s – to take a genre thriller that you might know but tell it in the North.

The whole story was filmed in the Northwest Territories and it’s designed to give audiences an insight into a whole different world that, often, movies or cinemas don’t come to. There aren’t many films these days that star Indigenous women or are filmed in the Northwest Territories. We want this movie to be a piece of entertainment, something you can really watch and feel thrilled by.

But also, because of it being from the North – and because of it starring Indigenous folks and being creatively led by Indigenous folks – it becomes something more, something that audiences can really be excited for, and get insight to, not just in the North but across Canada and ideally the world, too.

Tell me about filming a road movie in the Northwest Territories. There are times when our highways are not the easiest to drive across, never mind film on. How did that go?

I’ll add one complication to that: Imagine filming a movie on the highways of Northwest Territories in winter, and then also at night, because we did both of those things. It’s difficult.

Movies are hard to make in general, because you have dozens of people – we had 40 or so crew. We shot at the end of March a couple of winters ago, at a time when we thought it was going to be a little more mild, but the temperatures were -20C, -25C, even -30C. We had to cancel a night of shooting because it was so cold. We were out there at 2am in -25C filming some of the shots for this movie. It only happened because we had a crew that was so determined and focused.

The advantage when you do this is it makes such an impact on audiences. So much of filmmaking these days is CGI filmed on digital walls or that kind of thing, and you lose that tactile feel of “this thing actually happened.” When you watch our movie, you really feel that these things are happening. We did a ton of stunts for this movie, crashing the semi truck and the car into each other over and over again on the highway between Hay River and Fort Resolution in wintertime. It makes for a really captivating movie.

I still watch the film and get nervous when I see some of the shots of this huge semi truck rolling up to this car, and the big rumble of the vehicle, that kind of thing. So yes, it was very difficult to shoot, but I believe it makes this movie a pretty special experience.

You’re nervous? I’m getting nervous listening to you describe crashing a semi truck into a car on Highway 6 in the middle of winter, at night. Did you have any other traffic? Did you close down the road?

We worked with the highways department, the government, and we would close off about a five-kilometre portion of the road with flaggers at both ends. If vehicles came up, we would try to only close the highway for 10 minutes max. Once we got the shot, it takes time anyway to set up for the next shot so we would pull over and open up a lane so drivers could go through.

If anything, I think maybe it was kind-of fun for them because we had a big camera attached to a crane on top of a vehicle, so you got to see a movie set.

I’m from Hay River and my family’s from Fort Res. Everybody knows me and my family, so our flaggers would be like, “Hey, we’re filming a movie, it’s only five minutes.” And the driver’s like, “Yeah, I know Kelvin and his family, it’s fine.” So that was an advantage, as opposed to maybe being in northern Alberta, where everybody’s mean and cold and angry. We got understanding when we were shooting, which was great.

You’ve had a chance to see audiences in Yellowknife and Hay River react to the movie. What have they said?

It’s been an extremely positive response. The types of response that mean the most to me are when you have a couple come up to you, a husband and wife, and the husband says: “My wife nearly broke my hand, she was squeezing it so hard.” That’s a really visceral reaction that someone had to the movie. It’s a thriller, it should have that reaction. There are also a few jump scares, and watching 100 people in a room all jump at the same time was very satisfying as a filmmaker.

In the Yellowknife screening, when the climax happens, the big resolution happens, everybody in the audience clapped. Those types of thing help me feel confident as a filmmaker that it really had an impact.

But also, it’s an intense movie. We can talk about the fun and the stunts and stuff, but it delves into some real themes: Indigenous women and the kind of stuff that we know happens in the real world. It has those elements, and also it packs an emotional punch. After the screenings, you could see people processing it in a way where the feedback was like, “Wow, that was really meaningful, and what a unique thing to see in cinemas.” Which is what we wanted it to be. I’m so excited for more people to get to see it in theatres.

It’s opening at Hay River’s Riverview cinema on January 26. You’ve been a filmmaker for quite a while now. This is a movie of yours opening. How do you feel to have gotten to this point?

It’s surreal. And it’s hectic, because there’s a lot happening. But whatever, I take those moments and just allow myself a little piece of space that feels like a warm glow in your soul. “Yeah, this happened.” Dreams do come true if you really set your mind to something and stick with it. It’s a really profound feeling, I guess.

It’s going to screen in a few theatres across Canada and it’ll grow over time, as well. We’re going to try to get it into more theatres. But to know that it’s going to play in Hay River? I started going to that movie theatre when I was eight years old and my love of movies was grown in that theatre. To have it play there is pretty special, in a way that’s hard to put into words.

Correction: January 15, 2024 – 11:02 MT. We initially captioned a photo of Redvers at a cinema as being in Hay River, which is how the production had identified it. However, Yellowknife’s Capitol Theatre says you’re actually looking at one of its own screens in that image.