The Highway Of Tears has been circling the globe.
The patch of tragic pavement hasn't gone anywhere - it still stretches from Prince Rupert to Prince George and down into the Cariboo, following a path of missing and murdered women over the span of decades.
The strip of film documenting this roadway, directed by Matt Smiley, has covered countless more miles and comes back around to this region on May 21. His documentary will be screened Thursday night at Cineplex Odeon at Parkwood Mall.
A select local audience has already seen the film, but it wasn't an award winner yet. Now it is.
"We won best documentary at the Malibu International Film Festival. Pierce Brosnan was there to give out the awards," said Smiley. "At the Women In Film Festival in Vancouver we were the first to sell out the theatre and we won that festival."
It was also included in the Toronto International Film Festival's Human Rights Watch division and, with Highway Of Tears advocate Gladys Radek in attendance as a featured guest, raised $15,000 for women's shelters.
During the spring, Smiley showed the film more than 40 times, from small towns in the heart of the subject matter - Terrace, Hazelton, Vanderhoof, etc. - to major Canadian cities and internationally.
"One showing we set up in Calgary raised money for the Highway Of Tears Initiative (based at the Carrier Sekani Family Services offices in Prince George). The theatre operators really care about this subject matter and definitely they did not need to do that. Giving proceeds of the showing back to the organization doing the prevention work was definitely going above and beyond," Smiley said.
Several documentaries for film and news television have been made of the Highway Of Tears topic.
Smiley's has had the greatest response. It is a massive topic, if you featured each victim, their families, the circumstances of each violent case, and it gets even deeper when examining the underlying issues that touch some of the cases like addiction, poverty, aboriginal disconnection from mainstream society, and most importantly the reasons men are motivated to inflict suffering on women and too often get away with it.
"The film would never end," said Smiley, who admitted he had to pick emblematic points from the massive Highway Of Tears tree.
"When I started doing this, it was research, done out of personal curiosity," he said. "Then it grew to become a passion for me and I was caught up in it for the sake of getting answers. I wasn't thinking beyond that. These people's lives were stories I wanted to learn about, and it was like pages had been ripped out of our society's book - real human beings - and not enough was being done to figure those pages out."
He calculated that it would be better to take a longer time producing the film, utilizing the best technical expertise he could muster, than to rush the job. He even attracted the narration talents of Canadian film star Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Serenity, Castle). It paid off, Smiley said, because the film has subsequently earned better audience and festival support, which only spreads the message.
"I, and those who helped develop the film, support the push for a national inquiry," he said. "I believe that is necessary. I think so far we have only scratched the surface and made a bunch of assumptions. At the root of it, the public's perception has to change."
He also felt a personal blow when RCMP headquarters greatly reduced the budget for Project E-Pana, the dedicated team of officers and support staff looking into the Highway Of Tears group of cases.
"I don't honestly see an end in sight, pushing for that national inquiry, and for the kind of police resources that show these victimized families that the violence against their girls, their women, their loved ones, is being taken more seriously. And I believe the government has to do a lot of work to prevent violence against women, and so far that is a total disaster of a response."
The Cineplex Odeon screening happens at 6 p.m. and will include a public panel discussion and question period with Smiley.
