Quentin Tarantino pushed for "Frozen River" as the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival two years back and was effusive in his praise. At first glance the film is as far from Tarantino turf as Alaska is from Tahiti, but rumors had it that the struggling single-mom factor got to him. (Tarantino himself was raised by a single mother.)

"It was so out of the blue for me," says "Frozen River" director/writer Courtney Hunt. "If anything, I thought he would hate my film." Hunt's eyes light up as she recalls the excitement and sense of triumph, and she adds: "Sundance was especially important to me because I could not have lived if it weren't for independent films. It's like food and oxygen to me, an integral element of my life."

Hunt was born and raised in west Tennessee, a long way away from the windswept iciness of the St. Lawrence River, where the film is set. Still, she says the landscape was not entirely unfamiliar. "Where I grew up, the land was completely flat and there was a broad river, it often felt like, 'So where's the civilization?' As for the U.S.-Canadian borderland along the St. Lawrence, my husband is from that area. Every time I went to his hometown, I was struck by the emptiness of the landscape, largely unchanged throughout the years."