Our Girl Courtney Hunt Does Good!

Filmmaker Courtney Hunt

You don’t have to take my word for it, though. Sundance picked up her film, Frozen River. The film won the Grand Jury Prize for drama. None other than Quentin Tarantino said Frozen River, “put my heart in a vise and proceeded to twist that vise until the last frame.”

You can read the article in today’s New York Magazine profiles, here.

Way back in the day, as we were graduating Northeastern law school Courtney told me she was heading off to film school. She said I should be a producer. This was before I went to Sundance, before I knew much about film other than having strong opinions. It was w a a y before I wrote for Boxoffice.com (small fiasco with our group of writers…story for another day. Links at sidebar should still work though. Like this one for Before the Devil.)

Then life happened and we lost touch. Imagine my thrill at seeing this photo today in my inbox – Ms. Courtney on the cover of my New York Magazine daily dose email.

Glam girl, Courtney Hunt.

Courtney’s Columbia Film School MFA thesis film, Althea Faught, a short about the American civil war which she wrote and directed, was purchased by PBS and aired on American Playhouse. Not bad, hm?

Frozen River is a film about a poverty-stricken upstate mom who teams with a Native American woman to smuggle illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Canada border. Courtney spent ten years researching the Mohawk tribe near the Canadian border, befriending a medicine woman and slowly gaining the insular community’s trust. Here’s the summary from Courtney’s website:

Filmed in sub-zero weather in upstate New York, March of 2007, Frozen River is Courtney Hunt’s directorial debut.

Courtney’s feature-length script is set in a real-life smuggling zone on a Native American reservation between New York State and Quebec where the lure of fast money presents a daily challenge to single moms who would otherwise be making minimum wage. Strapped for money and having been deserted by her husband, working class Ray (Melissa Leo), reluctantly teams up with Lila (Misty Upham), a widowed Mohawk Indian, to smuggle illegal immigrants across the frozen St. Lawrence River from Canada to the U.S. in the trunk of a Dodge Spirit. Both women swear each trip will be their last, but one final run across the river leads to a showdown with the law on all sides.

I’ve contacted Courtney through her website. I’ll keep you posted on screenings when I get the info.

Way to go Courtney!