Frozen River is a 2008 American drama film written and directed by Courtney Hunt. The screenplay focuses on two working class women who smuggle illegal immigrants in the trunk of a car from Canada to the United States in order to make ends meet.

Plot

The film is set in the North Country of Upstate New York, near the Akwesasne (Where the Partridge Drum) St. Regis Mohawk Reservation and the Canadian border, shortly before Christmas. Ray Eddy is a discount store clerk struggling to raise two sons with her husband, a compulsive gambler who has disappeared with the funds she had earmarked to finance the purchase of a double-wide mobile home. While searching for him, she encounters Lila Littlewolf, a Mohawk bingo parlor employee who is driving his car, which she claims she found abandoned with the keys in the ignition at the local bus station. The two women, who have fallen on hard economic times, form a desperate and uneasy alliance and begin trafficking illegal immigrants from Canada into the United States across the frozen St. Lawrence River for $1200 each per crossing.