Florence is on the cusp. She's a child with an elaborate matchbox car setup in the garage, and a rite of passage on the horizon: her first deer hunt.
"Cold November," a feature film by Hibbing native Karl Jacob and set at his family's deer camp, is a Northern Minnesota-flavored story of tradition in a family of mostly women who have all moved toward adulthood with the same rifle.
"It's a profound experience to kill an animal, and doing it as a 12-year-old leaves a lasting impression," Jacob said in a phone interview from Orlando, where the movie is playing as part of the Florida Film Festival.
He would know. Florence's experience is based on the writer-director-actor's first hunt. He was traveling a lot while writing the movie, he said, and thinking a lot about coming-of-age milestones in different cultures. He used his own memory, swapped in a female protagonist, and framed it as a rural Minnesota coming-of-age ritual.
"The story itself, or what it has become, is what I've come to describe as a greatest hits of family experiences woven into one work of fiction," Jacob said.
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"Cold November," starring Twin Cities-based actor Bijou Abas, gets local screenings at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. April 21 at Zinema 2.
'COLD NOVEMBER'
The movie begins with the buildup to the hunt. Florence easily passes a gun safety test, she receives the family gun as a gift, she takes target practice surrounded by her people: grandma, who tells a story of illegally hunting during times of hunger; her aunt and uncle, who are raw from the death of their daughter; and her single mother, who doesn't have the luxury of missing a work shift.
The slow boil of a movie gives a voyeur's perspective into day-to-day familial moments: a sit in a sauna, dinner table conversations, an aunt weeping alone in the car, a first terrifying encounter with a tampon.
When grandma bags the first deer, she gives a tutorial in gutting it, and everyone shares the job of skinning the animal.
And then, finally, Florence sits alone in the quiet woods and waits.
"I was more or less raised by six women, and I was taught a lot about hunting by my mother and my aunt," Jacob said. "I thought it would be compelling to tell an amalgam of my mom, aunt and sister's story combined with mine. It comes from a place of truth."
In preparing for the role, Jacob said, Abas spent time on farms, earned her gun-safety certificate and learned about field dressing a deer.
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"She had never done this," he said. "She's a city girl. She was super excited for the story, super invested emotionally and physically."
He said he wanted the movie to have real deer and to have a documentary feel. They filmed during the 2015 deer hunting season on Jacob's family land - while his relatives were actually hunting and living in the shack.
In a scene involving a conversation by a fireplace, three people were sleeping in the next room with just a curtain separating them, he said.
RESPONSE
Jacob, who plays the lone male character in the movie, screened "Cold November" March 23-29 at Mann Cinema 8 in Hibbing and for that week, it old-sold both "Pacific Rim Uprising" and "Black Panther" at the theater.
It has played internationally and made its North American Premiere at Woodstock Film Festival, Twin Cities Film Festival and Indie Memphis Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature.
Minneapolis Star Tribune movie reviewer Colin Covert called it "one of those low-budget, come-out-of-nowhere films that is a good surprise."
The movie is the second of a Northern Minnesota-centric trilogy by Jacob that started with "Pollywogs," which is set at the same family cabin in Hibbing. The movie stars Jacob as a New Yorker who has returned home to Minnesota for a family reunion. Like "Cold November," this one was filmed during an actual family reunion - and features his mother and grandparents.
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He hasn't begun work on the trilogy's finale - but it will share a similar setting. Recently, a friend asked him why he was so obsessed with Northern Minnesota stories, he said.
"I think it's because throughout my entire childhood, I was constantly thinking about my life and how different it was from the movies I watched and the media I consumed," he said. "I never understood why the stories weren't reflecting my own life.
"I feel a duty to myself to uphold the mission of resolving that problem. For the youth of Minnesota today, I'm giving you this gift."
IF YOU GO
What: Screening of "Cold November" by Hibbing native Karl Jacob
When: 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. April 21
Where: Zinema 2, 222 E. Superior St.
Tickets: $9.75 adults, $7 students, $6.50 seniors, $5.50 kids
