Peter Dinklage to walk red carpet at opening gala of Calgary International Film Festival

Article content

Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage, Latin Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and actress Leslie Grace and British director Elliott Lester will be on the red carpet on Sept. 19 at the Calgary International Film Festival prior to the Canadian premiere of the Alberta-shot western The Thicket.

It’s the first time since 2022 that the film festival has held an opening gala, which will be at Arts Commons’ Jack Singer Concert Hall. It’s also the first time since 2017 that stars from the opening film are set to walk the red carpet. In its 25th year, the festival will run until Sept. 29 at various venues in downtown Calgary and on screens at Scotiabank Theatre Chinook.

Article content

Dinklage has been nominated for nine Emmy Awards, including eight for his role of Tyrion Lannister in the HBO hit Game of Thrones. He won the award for best supporting actor in a drama series in 2019, 2018, 2015 and 2011.

Grace has been nominated for three Latin Grammy Awards for her music and starred in the 2021 musical drama In the Heights. She was also cast in the lead of HBO Max’s Batgirl, but the film was shelved shortly before completion.

The Thicket was filmed in rural areas around Calgary in March of 2023. Set at the turn of the century, The Thicket also stars Levon Hawke, son of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, as Jack. His sister (played by British actress Esme Creed-Miles) is kidnapped by Cut Throat Bill (played by Juliette Lewis) and her gang. He hires bounty hunter Reginald Jones (Dinklage) to help rescue her. Helping them is a grave-digging son of an ex-slave named Eustice Hollow (played by Gbenga Akinnagbe) and a street-wise prostitute named Jimmy Sue (played by Grace.)

It had been in development as a passion project for Dinklage for years before cameras rolled in Alberta. His production company, Estuary Films, is among the producers, as is Chad Oakes and Mike Frislev of Calgary’s Nomadic Pictures. The crew was made up of a number of local film workers. Calgary International Film Festival artistic director Brian Owens said its local leanings made it the perfect candidate for the festival opening gala. It also provides some arthouse twists on the Western genre.

Article content

Article content

“Given the time period it is set in, one of the things that I took from it is the way it plays with gender roles and racial identity of that time frame,” says Owens. “So it’s a much more diverse film than you would normally get from that era. It shows off the Alberta landscape, especially the winter landscape, beautifully. That was one of my favourite parts of watching it. It’s really a non-traditional Western in every sense of the word.”

Earlier this week, it was also announced that the festival will host the Alberta premiere of the documentary series The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal on Sept. 18, the evening before the festival kicks off. The four-part series will be screened at the Globe Cinema with an intermission. It is directed by Mike Downie, brother of the band’s late singer Gord Downie. Mike Downie will be in attendance, as will producer Bryn Hughes and Jake Gold, an executive producer of the film and the Tragically Hip’s manager.

Gord Downie died in 2017 of a brain tumour.

“It’s actually going to play on the big screen in four cities in total: Toronto, Calgary, Los Angeles and Vancouver,” Owens says. “It’s going to be a really emotional experience. I watched it and episode four just about broke me.”

Article content

The festival’s full lineup will be announced on Aug. 28, although a good portion of the films have already been announced. That includes the world premiere of Alfonso Maiorana’s Goddess of Slide: The Forgotten Story of Ellen McIlwaine, a profile of the pioneering guitarist who spent the last 30 years of her life living quietly in Calgary before passing away in 2021.

Other titles announced include the Alberta premiere of Indian director Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, which picked up the Grand Prix this year at the Cannes Film Festival; Fort McMurray-based filmmaker Sanjay Patel’s The Birds Who Fear Death, a drama starring Graham Greene; the world premiere of Canadian director Joel Stewart’s Soul’s Road starring country star Dallas Smith; the Alberta premiere of Norwegian director Silje Evensmo Jacobsen’s A New Kind of Wilderness, which won the Grand Jury Prize World Cinema Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival and Swedish-Polish director Magnus von Horn’s fact-based drama, The Girl With the Needle.

Calgary filmmaker Gillian McKercher will hold the Alberta premiere of Lucky Star, about a reformed gambler who returns to playing poker after losing money to a tax scam. The film is a feature follow-up to her 2018 debut Circle of Steel. Calgary filmmaker Cody Lefthand will also present the documentary Stories We Have Earned: The Stoney Nakoda Film Project about the exploitation of the Stoney Nakoda people and their culture through Banff Indian Days and the Calgary Stampede.

Calgary’s J. Stevens’ Really Happy Someday will make its Alberta premiere, telling the story of a transmasculine theatre performer who is unable to control his voice after starting testosterone 12 months earlier.

Article content