Winner of Audience Choice Awards at the 2013 Mill Valley Film Festival and the 2014 Portland Oregon Women's Film Festival, writer/director Britta Sjogren's Redemption Trail is a contemporary Western centered around two powerful, yet deeply troubled women fleeing pasts that haunt them.

Tess (LisaGay Hamilton, television's The Practice and Men of a Certain Age) is the daughter of a murdered Black Panther revolutionaary now living life off the grid on a Sonoma vineyard and resistant of anything resembling connection. Reluctantly, she ends up giving shelter to Anna (Lily Rabe, television's American Horror Story), a desperate young woman who has attempted suicide in a nearby woodland.

The two unexpectedly form an alliance where others who've tried to reach them have failed - Anna's husband (Hamish Linklater) and Tess's employer (Jake Weber) can't break through their walls, but the very different women seem to find in each other a new vision of themselves and an ability to rise above their circumstances in simple and dramatic ways.

Redemption Trail has been picked up by Philly-based indie distributor Breaking Glass Pictures for an August 12th DVD release and will likely most resonate with those seeking to discover a new voice among women's filmmakers. Beautifully photographed by Bradley Sellers, Redemption Trail tries incredibly hard, too hard perhaps, to sell its redemptive message but too often gets bogged down with its overly dramatic dialogue and Mark Orton's piercing and distracting original score. LisaGay Hamilton, in particular, does her darndest to rise above the material and gives her character layers that I'm not quite convinced existed on paper but it's not enough to allow Redemption Trail rise above its well intentioned but formulaic mediocrity.

© Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic