The Revenant star Forrest Goodluck, Blake Alec Miranda, Glen Gould and Brandon Oakes have nabbed lead roles in Bretten Hannam’s supernatural thriller Place of Ghosts, now shooting in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Goodluck played Hawk, the son of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Hugh Glass in The Revenant. Hannam’s third feature film follows siblings Mise’l and Antle, close confidants as children who have drifted apart as adults.
When a malevolent, rotting spirit of teeth and bones begins tormenting them, the siblings are forced to reunite and journey into Skite’kmujuekati’k, or the Place of Ghosts primordial forest that exists outside of time, to face their violent upbringing.
“As Mise’l and Antle descend into the darkness of the forest, the emotions and the core of the story cut a visceral path through things left unsaid, leading to a different way of understanding each other, before doing battle with the dark spirit that threatens to consume them,” Hannam, a Two-Spirit L’nu filmmaker, says of the movie’s plot.
Hannam also wrote and directed the breakout hit Wildhood, which bowed at the Toronto Film Festival in 2021. That followed the filmmaker’s debut feature, North Mountain, which upended conventions in the thriller genre by casting two-spirit Indigenous people in roles traditionally reserved for white men.
Alec Miranda starred in S.W.A.T. and To and From, Gould starred in Tulsa King and Pet Cemetery: Bloodlines, and Oakes appeared in The Trades, Diggstown, Slasher and Through Black Spruce.
Place of Ghosts is written and directed by Hannam, who also produces along with Marc Tetreault, Jason Levangie, Martin Katz, Diana Elbaum and David Ragonig, while John R. Sylliboy is an associate producer and Cotty Chubb executive produces.
Place of Ghosts will be released in Canada by VVS Films. World sales are being handled by Magnify.