FALLING SNOW

Screenplay by Michelle LaVey

Intimate tale with powerful imagery, an existential character journey, set largely in snow-drenched Montana. For Betsy Yarborough, lead Yetta is on every page and almost every frame investigating the mystery of her life: Who was my mother? Who was my father? Who am I? Told through a series of stunning events, Yetta works at Whole Foods in San Francisco when her grandmother dies and she inherits the family farm in Montana. Yetta confronts her estranged father in prison, a serial rapist who murdered her college roommate, and the convict tells Yetta she was adopted. An embarrassing one-night stand with a rancher in Kalispell leads to an unplanned pregnancy* she debates keeping but decides to abort. Yetta regrets that decision, settles into her ranch, learns how to raise cattle and aims to start all over. Powerful last scene has Yetta at a nursing home where her Alzheimer’s-afflicted birth mother first mistakes Yetta for her nurse, then starts calling Yetta her daughter, unaware this stranger actually is the child she once gave up for adoption. Truly compelling character-driven female quest movie is worth considering, a star vehicle about a stranger in a strange land.