Grants & Awards

About the Film:

On the snow-covered Arctic tundra, at the top of the world in Barrow, Alaska, two Inuit teenagers try to get away with murder.

About the Filmmakers:

Andrew Okpeaha MacLean (Director/Writer) is an Iñupiaq filmmaker born and raised in Alaska. In 2008 he was named one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine.  His most recent film, Sikumi (On the Ice) premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking and went on to many other awards at festivals around the world. Other films include Natchiliagniaqtuguk Aapagalu (Seal Hunting With Dad), which had its premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival; Kinnaq Nigaqtuqtuaq (The Snaring Madman), which won best short film at the 2006 American Indian Film Festival; Such A Perfect Day; and When The Season Is Good: Artists Of Arctic Alaska, a full-length documentary which was a featured screening in the 2007 Arctic Summer Series at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and was acquired for broadcast by ARTE, European Public Television.  MacLean is a recipient of a 2008 United States Artists Rasmuson Fellowship, the John H. Johnson Film Award, a 2004 Princess Grace Foundation Graduate Film Fellowship, the 2003-2004 Martin E. Segal prize, the 2007-2008 Clive Davis Award for Excellence in Music In Film, and the 2007-2008 Riese Award. He holds his MFA in film directing from New York University.

Cara Marcous (Producer) produced the short narrative film Sikumi (On the Ice), which has won numerous awards including the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the BAFTA/LA Award for Excellence, and has screened at over 50 festivals around the world.  In 2005, she produced the documentary feature When the Season is Good: Artists of Arctic Alaska, which premiered at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and was acquired by ARTE for multi-broadcast in 34 European countries. She worked for several years in development with acclaimed independent producer Ben Barenholtz and has produced several plays including the premiere of her own full-length piece Lapse at Walkerspace in New York City. Marcous is the Sheila Johnson Fellow for the 2009 Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Creative Producing Initiative.  She is the co-founder of The Hub Project, a development initiative for emerging film and theater artists from New York and Australia, and holds a bachelor’s degree from Brown University in Theater Arts.

Festival & Award Highlights:

Sundance 2011 – World Premiere
Berlin 2011 – Best First Feature, Crystal Bear
Seattle 2011 – Best New American Film
Los Angeles 2011
BFI London 2011