16 year-old Calvin Lehrer has a dark secret. It’s a secret so dark he keeps it from his 14 year-old brother. Maybe he’s trying to keep it from himself. When he’s pulled over in Calgary, Alberta early one morning in 1977, a time in which 16 year-olds could hold adult licenses, he is charged with driving under the influence. He loses his driver's license, loses his job, loses his way.  

​

Soon after, Calvin and his brother, Aidan, meet Jessica Greyeyes, an indigenous girl of 12. She enlists the brothers’ help to drive her into the Canadian Rockies. The journey has an inexorable quality. Calvin is an angry teenager. Aidan is naïve and timid to the point of dysfunction. Jessica seems like a guileless child, but she's holding something back.

​

The brothers spend a terrifying night alone in a forest and, freed the next morning, are in a rage that gets them locked up in a reservation jail and compelled to participate in a sweat lodge ritual that brings on powerful hallucinations. They come face to face with the distant past and the early experiences that have defined them. 

​

EMERALD LAKE – IN PRE-PRODUCTION FALL 2025