THE FILMS

IN THE WORLD / IN PRODUCTION / IN DEVELOPMENT

pot luck / the cold / a thousand guns / war path / the earth above / ghost soldiers

THE EARTH ABOVE / SCREENPLAY RUSSELL FRIEDENBERG

It's Christmas in the toxic mining hamlet of Contention, New Mexico. Sun-bleached trailers cling weakly to the crisp desert floor. Beyond them, a gaping wound in the earth, the black mouth of a mineshaft, Uranium flowing from it.

JUTE PANKOWSKY has had it. He's had it with the dizziness, the headaches. He's had it with the lung quaking cough that keeps him up nights. He's had it with the nightmares that plague him when he finally goes to sleep. And most of all, he's had it with the uranium mine that has stolen his health, his heart and his family.Jute lives with his Paiute Indian wife, NITA PANKOWSKY. She's all that's left in Jute's shattered world, all he has left to lose. And he's about to lose her.

WALTER CHAVEZ is a Paiute man living in the Mexican coastal town of Nayarit, with his photographer wife, ROSA, and his juvenile delinquent son, JAXON. Retired activists from the 70’s, Walter and Rosa still love a good fight. So does their son, and the home arrest monitor hanging around Jaxon's ankle isn't about to keep him from following in their footsteps. Returning to their New Mexico reservation, they stop at the Mexican border to purchase an old Airstream Trailer, courtesy of an eccentric, blonde-haired Navajo named BIRD STEPPINGSTONE. Loaded down with a dark secret they head north, like a silver bullet, to winter, to Contention. To war. Back in Contention, Jute and Nita make love for the last time. Afterwards Jute lowers his wife into the mineshaft, his miners cap lighting her way through the inky abyss.

After Jute boils HERBS and makes Nita a cup of tea. Before she takes a sip, Nita reminds Jute to pray for them. But it's clear she doesn't mean now. It's clear this is no ordinary cup of tea. It’s clear she’s saying goodbye.
Distraught, Jute flees on his bike as an EXPLOSION rocks the air, an enormous ball of fire scorching the night sky! Though we don't know it yet, poetic justice has just been served at the deadly uranium mine.

With HARVEY STALLFAST, the local, black Mormon reservation cop and SARGEANT MIKE MANLY of Homeland Security on his trail, Jute sets out across the desert, with it's burnt valleys, icy peaks and carved canyons to Mexico - to freedom. Aided by BIRD STEPPINGSTONE, the 5' 2" twenty-five year old leader of this misfit group of terrorists and fighting his own weakening body, Jute presses on finding solace and collaboration with Indians, Mexicans and Americans, each connected in delicate ways to the uranium mine that has claimed so many lives.

The characters in THE CROSSING are driven to desperate acts by loss and the indifference of the American Military/Industrial/Corporate machine. Their self-sacrifice - so horrible, so beautiful – is rooted in their culture, tradition and spirituality and hastened by the specter of eminent death.