The Babysitter’s Club star Malia Baker discovers her inner animal to survive a deadly hide-and-seek wilderness pursuit in the trailer for the Hair of the Bear thriller, which dropped on Thursday.
The coming-of-age film, shot northeast of Winnipeg, Manitoba, in a frozen, wintry setting, marks the narrative feature debut of Alexandre Trudeau, brother of former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and fellow writer and director James McLellan.
Hair of the Bear, which has a world premiere Thursday night at the Windsor International Film Festival, sees Baker play Tori, an anxious 16-year-old girl who, after self-harming and refusing to go to school, finds herself in a remote wintry cabin with her grandfather, Ben, played by Roy Dupuis.
“Who can say which moments will shape you into who you will become?,” Tori’s grandfather tells her at one point in the trailer as she learns hunting and survival skills along a frozen lake near the U.S. border. Soon, a crisis forces Tori into a deadly cat and mouse game where her despair gives way to defiance as guns are pointed and hands are bloodied.
Hair of the Bear also sees Baker, also known for roles in Nickelodeon’s horror anthology Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Descendants 4, step into a darker role in the Canadian indie drama, which she executive produces, while Juliette Hagopian produces.
Trudeau, who earlier directed the documentaries Embedded in Baghdad and The New Great Game, is also the son of the late Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. He met McLellan while both were in their youth in officer training in the Canadian Armed Forces and have stayed good friends since.
While Trudeau moved into making documentaries, McLellan eventually taught high school in Winnipeg, where the classroom anxiety he saw among his young students inspired the survival thriller he eventually made with Trudeau.
German cinematographer Stefan Ciupek, whose credits include Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire and Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, lensed Hair of the Bear.
