Like Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer, Courtney Hunt’s equally superb Frozen River deals with the real and imagined boundaries of our dreams, but this time on the US-Canadian border, a decidedly different frontier. Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) has been a struggling single mother since her gambling-addict husband abandoned her and their two sons. Short on cash and with a dead-end retail job, she can sometimes only feed her family popcorn and juice. As she goes to find her husband at a Native American gambling parlor, Ray sees her husband’s car being driven off by a young Mohawk woman (Misty Upham). She gives chase, and eventually strikes up an acquaintance with Lila, whose real line is not stealing cars but rather smuggling illegal aliens over the lightly patrolled border that straddles the Mohawk reservation. Desperate for money, Ray agrees to help Lila with her smuggling, a process which involves stuffing migrants in the trunk and driving them over the titular frozen river.

Frozen River is a gorgeously shot film, capturing the frigid, relentless snow of the New York-Quebec winter that drapes the dreary, working class buildings of trailer homes and strip malls. The acting has a hard-edged, desperate tone to it as well, and Ray and Lila make an excellent odd couple who must deal with their cultural and racial differences. As Ray goes deeper into the smuggling business, she learns to appreciate the cultural sovereignty of the Mohawk Nation, though it remains crushed underfoot by the American government. Still, Ray is no enlightened progressive; she does not know where Pakistan is, but she does know that is where terrorists come from. Frozen River avoids the sentimental, learning about multiculturalism clichés in favor of a tense, realistic thriller.

At times harsh and shocking, Frozen River is a clear-eyed look at this world we have created, where men and women must allow themselves to be transported like cattle for the tiny chance of improving their economic status or to escape persecution in their homeland. So long as governments and the people who make them possible continue to view human beings as commodities, the drama and the tragedy of Frozen River will continue to be played out in border crossings everywhere.