Just when you think you know which parts of the country go hard, Maine comes in and puts itself in the running for the number one spot. Proving that when the potato harvest is in full swing, the drug money is flowing, teens are running wild and Harvest Buddies are the new friends with benefits, Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly’s Beneath the Harvest Sky is perhaps not the best tourism brochure for the Pine Tree State.
Casper (Emory Cohen) and Dominic (Callan McAuliffe) are best friends on very different paths – Dominic spends his harvest picking potatoes as he should, while Casper gets pressured into the family drug smuggling business by his father (Game of Thrones’ Aiden Gillen). A lot of yelling ensues in glorious Maine accents as Casper and Dominic see their friendship start to deteriorate over their different lifestyles. Hey, leaving the potato farm for a drug deal over the Canadian border must seem pretty glamorous for a teen who has never experienced anything different.
Check out the trailer for yourself:
It looks like an interesting film in that it takes a such tried and true concepts – the coming of age story of two friends on different paths, rebelling and staying on the straight-and-narrow, trying to please your father and doing whatever you need to help your family, etc. – and then framing it with something odd: drugs and potatoes. I’m in.
Beneath the Harvest Sky premieres at TIFF in September.
