Smuggling human cargo from Canada into the United States over the frozen St. Lawrence River is Ray, a white woman, and Mohawk Lila’s only option. Both are in dire need of fast money, and so against each’s better judgment they agree to work together on a few runs. As the women begin with mutual distrust and apprehension and finally move toward understanding, the film is a portrait of desperation, racism, class schism, and social misperceptions. When a final Christmas Eve job transporting a Pakistani couple goes wrong, it sets the women against New York state troopers on one side and Quebec provincial police on the other and forces a grave choice. Hunt’s narrativedriven social drama boasts a chillingly beautiful winter landscape appropriate to the desolation of Ray and Lila’s lives. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2008.