Summer at Windridge

Summer at Windridge is a 90-minute non-union feature film shooting primarily in the Greater Toronto Area, with 3–4 days on an Indigenous reserve in Ontario. When a written-off city teen and a local Indigenous girl join forces to save a sacred grove from a resort development, the summer that bonds them is fractured by a misunderstanding neither sees coming — and saving the land turns out to depend on whether they can first understand each other. Dumped at her grandparents' for the summer, fifteen-year-old Emily Parker arrives in the fading lake town of Windridge hooded-up and unreachable — cut off by her friends, forgotten by her busy parents. Everything changes when she meets Zoe Redfern, a local Indigenous girl, and Zoe's grandmother Auntie June, keeper of the stories of the land where a resort is about to break ground — including a sacred clearing and a leaning cedar older than the town. With the build crew due August 15, the girls launch "Voices of Windridge," gathering the town's memories on Zoe's one condition: June decides what may be shared. But as the deadline closes in — and a health scare reveals June's stories may die with her — Emily panics and posts the one thing she was trusted never to show. The video goes viral. The friendship detonates. And the machines head for the clearing first. What can't be won by noise is won by repair: Emily returns to June and Zoe with the only offer that matters — you decide what gets said; I just hold the camera. Rebuilt on consent, their new film, "Windridge Remembers," travels the world precisely because of what it refuses to show — and moves the developer to preserve the sacred clearing permanently, guided by local elders and youth. The resort still comes. But the heart of the land is safe, June begins passing her stories to Zoe, Emily's mother comes home to a daughter she finally sees — and two fifteen-year-olds have taught a town that summer never leaves; it just changes form. Shoot dates: August 18 – September 7, 2026.