“As a young man growing up in Alberta, I related immediately to Cole’s plight of wanting to build a better life for himself. His sense of entrapment in the town, his obligations to his family, to his history, to the family business… It was the racial exploration in the film that was new territory for me as a director and that aspect of the conflict in the film was both intriguing and challenging.” ? Carl Bessai In an insightful exploration of identity and creativity, Cole is an aspiring writer trapped in a small British Columbia town by an overwhelming sense of obligation. Seizing an opportunity at a city university, Cole meets Serafina, a black woman equally trapped by her affluent, urbane circumstances. When Cole’s life beckons him back home, the escape each provides the other seems to be slipping away. When Serafina follows him, the tension entrenched in the town explodes. Tucked at the convergence of barren plains, mountains, and two rivers, the landscape itself provides a window into the social and racial divides that plague the residents of the universally recognizable town.