Production is underway in Yellowknife on writer/director/producer Marie Clements’ drama, Red Snow.

Red Snow follows a Giwch’in soldier caught in an ambush in Afghanistan who is interrogated by a Taliban commander. It features four languages: Gwich’in, Inuvialuktun, Pashto and English. The feature will move production to British Columbia on May 31, shooting in Kamloops, Whistler and Cache Creek.

Producers on the project are Lael McCall of Vancouver-based Principia Productions and Michelle Morris of Vancouver’s Lily Pictures. Women in the Director’s Chair (WIDC) president and CEO Carol Whiteman (Never Steady, Never Still) serves as an exec producer. Cinematographer Roger Vernon (The Mountain Between Us) is attached to the project, alongside production designer Michael Diner (The Revenant) and sound designer Craig Berkey (Darkest Hour).

Red Snow stars Asivak Koostachin (Cardinal), Kane Mahon (The Breadwinner), Miika Whiskeyjack (Blackstone), Tantoo Cardinal (Dances with Wolves), Michelle Thrush (Blackstone), Steven Cree Molison (Blackstone) and Afghan singer Mozhdah Jamalzadah.

The drama was one of three films selected in September 2017 to receive support through CBC Breaking Barriers Film Fund, which helps fund projects by underrepresented filmmakers.

The WIDC Feature Film Award has also backed Clements’ project, with a prize of nearly $200,000 of in-kind services and rentals from Panavision Canada, William F. White International and North Shore Studios.

The film also received financial support from Telefilm Canada, The Harold Greenberg Fund, APTN, Creative B.C. and the Northwest Territories Film Rebate program.

Red Snow is a recipient of the Canada Media Fund’s Aboriginal Convergent funding program and will produce an online website called Book of Snow to record words for “snow” from languages all around the world.

Photo credit: Howard Davis

Correction: An earlier version of this story omitted the CMF’s contribution. Playback regrets the error.