The Drummer, named best film at Dead North 2020, will lead a showcase of 16 horror shorts to be screened at Yellowknife’s Snowcastle on Tuesday evening.
Produced by Jennifer Hunt-Poitras, Norbert Poitras, and Chantal Dubuc, the movie features a drummer hoping to turn his life around. The short defeated around 50 other entries to scoop the best picture Zombear at the weekend’s Dead North awards night.
Devil in the Details (Tanya Krueger and Carson Asmundson) and Unborn (Keith Robertson) each took three Zombears.
Devil in the Details star and Cabin Radio host Kevin MacDonald won best actor, while the short also picked up best screenplay and best cinematography.
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MacDonald described being out on the lake at “minus 50-something for a good half an hour” to get the movie’s standout shot, showing his character, Mike, spreadeagled on the ice.
A still from the trailer for Dead North 2020 movie The Drummer.
“He’s a guy who’s down and out on his luck,” explained MacDonald. “He’s killed his girlfriend in a car crash because he insisted on driving home drunk, regrets making that move, and decides to make a deal with the devil in order to make things right – which, in the end, does not go that way.”
Unborn – in which a grieving woman receives a mysterious package that alters her sense of reality – earned Robertson a win for best director, also picking up best editing and best actress for Amy Lechelt.
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Frostbitten won Zombears for best original music and best youth film, while Kaw Tay Whee School – whose students produced the movie – won best marketing for two of its students’ entries, Frostbitten and Wiidza. The latter movie won a Zombear for best Indigenous language.
Mopsters, Herb Mathisen’s “timeless saga of workplace woe,” won Zombears for best trailer and the audience award.
All of the above movies will play at Snowking’s Winter Festival on Tuesday evening. The screening begins at 8:30pm. Tickets – $20 each – can be purchased from the festival box office or at the door.
The full selection of movies showing is:
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Awhzzz
Chrysalis
The Clog
Devil in the Details
The Drummer
Eat Your Carrots
Frostbitten
The Ghost in Dobbs’ Diner
Improbable Parables
Mopsters
Mother
Unborn
Welcome to Tundradome
When a Tree Falls
Wiidza
