‘Someone’s Daughter’ review: A knotty survival tale set against the hostile Canadian wilderness

Dir. Wiebke Von Carolsfeld. Canada. 2026. 97mins

Ten years after she successfully defended a client on a rape charge, criminal defense lawyer Sam (Pascale Bussieres) is abducted by the father of the woman who brought the case. Sam is dumped, shoeless and defenceless, on a remote island in the Canadian wilderness, along with her former client, Paul (Francois Arnaud). What starts out as a mystery-tinged survival story segues into a knotty ethical quandary, as Paul’s behaviour prompts Sam to question, belatedly, what kind of a man she advocated for in court a decade previously. The fourth feature from director Wiebke Von Carolsfeld makes striking use of its wild and hostile backdrop, but the picture’s promising premise is let down slightly by an underpowered screenplay.

What Von Carolsfeld achieves most successfully is an examination of shifting power dynamics

The film, which premieres at Fantasia Film Festival, represents a shift towards more genre-aligned material for Von Carolsfeld, whose previous pictures include her TIFF-award-winning 2002 debut Marion Bridge; Stay (2013), about a couple struggling with the idea of parenthood; and The Saver (2015), which picked up several awards, including the jury prize at the Green Bay Film Festival. Someone’s Daughter will likely benefit from Heated Rivalry star Arnaud’s name in the credits, but it’s Bussieres’s poised, tightly controlled performance that is the main focus of the story, as Sam is confronted by the ethical considerations of her chosen career. Further festival exposure seems likely, but the film may lack the complexity, the dramatic impact and shock value to transition to arthouse theatrical success.

What Von Carolsfeld achieves most successfully is an examination of shifting power dynamics between the characters. Sam is accustomed to being in control. Her outfit, when she is snatched by Mr Borden (Peter Outerbridge), is one that emphasises her Alpha status: a tan leather skirt, immaculately pressed white shirt and precarious stiletto heels. The latter are shed early in the film when Sam bolts from her captor in a fruitless attempt to escape. But Mr Borden has planned for every eventuality, including Sam’s reckless dash and, it turns out, his own death by suicide.

Sam is left with just a loaded revolver for company. Shortly after, she discovers Paul bound and gagged on the floor of a disused fishing shack. Also in the shack: a hotly contested and ancient tin of spam and enough discarded clothes for Sam to change into something better suited to trekking through the forest. She keeps her pearl earrings, however, and they glint, defiant and incongruous, while the rest of her expensive grooming is gradually defeated by the rigors of the wilderness. Like her tendency to immediately take charge, the earrings are an indication of her success and status — none of which matters a whole lot when survival is hanging in the balance.

Her assertive confidence and independence clearly rankle Paul, whose relief in seeing her sours a little more each time she makes a decision for the both of them. Power and control are things that Paul covets for himself and begrudges in this self-assured woman. Despite the uneasy partnership between the two, an eventual flare-up seems inevitable. The manner in which it unfolds is grimly predictable. Like the somewhat generic swelling strings on the score and the ominous creaks and crackles in the sound design, the film’s reliance on sexual violence as a plot device feels disappointingly unimaginative.

Elsewhere, however, the filmmaking is stronger. A stand-out element of the picture throughout is Lena Mill-Reuillard’s lithe cinematography. The muted, mossy light of the forest is strikingly beautiful but at the same time loaded with threat. The snaking camera, peering through the trees as Sam and Paul embark on their purgatorial trudge towards an uncertain future, gives us a sense of spying on their progress, as fear and despair kick in and their true characters start to show.