Smudge the Blades Northern Lights
Tickets
On sale viff.org
About
Cody Lightning’s rousing hockey drama centres on the Treaty 6 Blades, a team of Indigenous youth in Northern Alberta. The film begins with their expulsion from their regional league, a low point from which they’ll rise courageously. Headed by Zamboni-driver-turned-coach Willie Gladue (Lighting himself), the team faces down all manner of challenges, both on and off the rink, on their way to a chance at redemption.
Smudge the Blades has a lot going for it: rough, realistic humour; a bracingly honest depiction of life on the reserve; a reckoning with generational trauma; and all the preceding folded into an engaging sports narrative. Most of all, the film has a terrific cast — Lightning gives an endearing performance, and every last team member stands out as a unique human presence, their scars and strengths radiating off the screen. This is a crowd-pleaser in which victory is about much more than winning the game, and in which heroism is shared among a community.
Presented by
Media Partner
Smudge the Blades has a lot going for it: rough, realistic humour; a bracingly honest depiction of life on the reserve; a reckoning with generational trauma; and all the preceding folded into an engaging sports narrative. Most of all, the film has a terrific cast — Lightning gives an endearing performance, and every last team member stands out as a unique human presence, their scars and strengths radiating off the screen. This is a crowd-pleaser in which victory is about much more than winning the game, and in which heroism is shared among a community.
Presented by
Media Partner
