Attend Film Prize in-person October 16-17th or watch online starting October 15th, watch all 20 short films, and then you can vote for the grand prize winner of $50,000 cash. Plus you can vote for the best acting performance category!
When a ghostly stranger warns them of a deadly wind storm, a gang of thieves takes shelter in the very town they once robbed.
Produced by Kyle Gilmore, Heath Hill, Lucy Brown, Joe Rolfe
Starring Dana Otero, Ryan Matthews, Jim Elliot, Cullen Clark, Jason Barnett
Cinematography by Montana Huckabay
Edited by Austin Hill
Music by John Desentis
Heath Hill is a writer, director, and filmmaker from Louisiana. He has worked as an independent filmmaker across a range of projects, from commercial documentaries to short films. He has a passion for storytelling and visual artistry and pursues filmmaking as a way to explore those interests. That passion took root early, spent with his siblings writing, directing, and shooting short films in his hometown. Heath is also a film instructor at the University of Louisiana Monroe, where he heads their studio, Warhawk Innovation Studios, leading collegiate film programs, designing hands-on curricula, and building regional production networks to foster the next generation of filmmakers.
Coming Soon
Though inspired by The Twilight Zone and old Westerns like Shane and Unforgiven, I didn’t think of Winter Wind as a Western at first – it began as my processing of community-wide poverty and how it results from selfishness and the oppression of those with less power.
To explore this cinematically, I turned to the Western, a genre historically built on raids, robberies, and romanticized outlaws. But rather than glorifying the violence, Winter Wind deconstructs it. I’ve always believed that the best genre films use traditional tropes to highlight the irony of those tropes in a real world setting. By taking classic elements like town-wide raids and bank robberies and stripping away the romanticism, the film demands accountability and asks what would happen if those archetypes were forced to sit with the consequences.
Drawing from my own roots and a deep love for cinema, and rooted in the rich atmosphere of North Louisiana where we filmed on location and shaped alongside an incredible creative team, I hope my film delves into the lasting weight of our past actions and the quiet, difficult possibility of transformation.
— Heath Hill
