Director Anne Wheeler’s Suddenly Naked may have proven popular with the Genie jury, but her latest feature, The Edge of Madness (aka A Wilderness Station), is currently languishing under the radar.

The murder mystery, set against a backdrop of 1850s Manitoba, was passed over by the Toronto and Vancouver film festivals and opened on Dec. 6 on just one screen in Vancouver. The film is produced by Montreal’s CineGroupe, Winnipeg’s Credo Entertainment and Vancouver-based Gregorian Films, and is distributed by Lions Gate Films.

‘I’m stupefied that we’re having such a small release. That’s typically Canadian. Done for not much money, we’ve got some incredible locations. But we don’t have any stars. That’s the whole thing right there,’ Wheeler scoffs. The film’s cast includes Brendan Fehr (TV’s Roswell) and Corey Sevier (Little Men).

It didn’t help that Sarah Polley, originally tapped to star in this adaptation of an Alice Munro short story, pulled out of the project and was replaced by the lesser-known Caroline Dhavernas (The Baroness and the Pig).

‘I worry for this movie. It’s an important film,’ Wheeler says. ‘We did a day of press and are running advertisements, but it will all be decided on what happens now,’ she adds, with an eye on the opening weekend.

This kind of suspense would drive any filmmaker to the edge of madness.