A scene from the film Father of Nations. (Photo Courtesy Thousand Year Films)

By Chris Brown

Opens Friday

Father of Nations, shot in southeastern Alberta, on the big screen in Medicine Hat

Oct 3, 2022 | 2:22 PM

HILDA, AB – Seven years after the initial concept trailer was shot at Dinosaur Provincial Park and three years after principal filming wrapped in Hilda, the full-length feature film Father of Nations will get a one-week run at Medicine Hat’s Cineplex theatre beginning this Friday.

Hilda’s Andy Kirschenman is one of the film’s executive producers. Looking back to the first days in Dinosaur Provincial Park, Kirschenman marvels at how far the production has come and is excited to share it with his community. He says they’ve been gently hounding him for a while.

“I don’t think we would have ever thought we would see this as a full-length feature film in a Cineplex in Medicine Hat so it’s very, very interesting,” he said Monday. “It’s going to be really good to be able to share it with the community. I mean Medicine Hat is where Hilda does all of, all of its shopping and everything anyway. That is, like you said, that is our hometown basically and it’s going to be exciting to be able to see that on the screen there. Just about everyone I talk to in the area that’s one of the questions that they have is are we going to get to see it and I can say ‘yes you can.'”

Last week the film was an official selection at the Calgary International Film Festival where it was also nominated for best Alberta feature film.

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Kirschenman said watching it at the festival was surreal and a feeling he doesn’t think he’ll ever have again.

READ MORE: Hilda backdrop for post-apocalyptic film shoot

He was involved from the start and had numerous duties including housing some crew, borrowing trailers from neighbours and arranging transportation. He also scouted locations and got landowner approval and adds Hilda and its people are featured prominently.

“You’re going to be able to see the town of Hilda featured quite prominently. There’s also a lot of scenes taking place in the badlands, so if you think Drumheller, or the clay pits in Redcliff,” he said. “We have, where the South Saskatchewan River goes through this area, some very picturesque badlands in this area as well. So those are some things that maybe people won’t recognize specifically the area because they’re off the beaten track and on private lease land but definitely the landscapes of southern Alberta will show up.”

Local people will also show up. Kirschenman says about 50 people from the Hilda and Medicine Hat areas will be in the film, “some of it is really short, short glimpses of people, some of them are more featured.”

Father of Nations, produced by Calgary’s Thousand Year Films, is set in a post-apocalyptic world on the verge of extinction. The 2017 wildfire in the Hilda area certainly can’t be looked at in a positive light but it did aid with filming locations, Kirschenman said.

“All of sudden the ability to showcase a post-apocalyptic landscape in our area. So we have burned fields of flax and corn and burned-off fields with lots of fence lines in them,” he said. “Lots of interesting landscapes that came out of a pretty, pretty terrible and terrifying eight or 12 hours. It was good to be able to use some of that very bad for something that actually turns out to be quite beautiful.”

Kirschenman says there may be a meet and greet with the writer, producer and director at one of the local screenings and to check the Father of Nations Facebook page for updates.