When you say you want to pursue art in Saskatchewan, many people will push you down or try to convince you to pursue something else, something more viable. But, that hasn’t stopped artists from this province from pursuing their crafts with fervour and reaching amazing heights. 

Mitch Oliver and Jesse Sawitsky, creators of Sask-inspired horror short film The Druid’s Hand, are two of those passionate, artistic souls set on proving that Saskatchewan is not a graveyard for artists’ dreams but rather a place of great inspiration that is driven by a dedicated, passionate and extremely talented art community. 

I was fortunate to sit down and speak with the director-writer duo a few weeks back to discuss their journeys as artists, their inspirations for their short film and the trek from Saskatchewan soil to the black carpet of Hollywood’s own Screamfest Horror Film Festival. Here’s what they had to tell me.

It was the 2000s punk movement that first brought the pair together in high school. “I grew up in Alveena, and lived in Saskatoon for ten years,” Sawitsky, the film’s producer and co-writer, said. “We met around age 17 or 18, playing in local punk and metal bands in the Saskatoon music scene,” he continued. “With all the counterculture movements, punk and metal and horror kind of just go side-by-side.” 

Oliver, who directed and co-wrote the film, shared a similar sentiment: “Music took over in my highschool years and it was just music, music, music for years. But then I hung up the mic [and] decided I wanted to pursue film.”

This transition from playing in local punk bands to shooting films proved more difficult for The Druid’s Hand director than he could have expected. 

Oliver told me that the decision to take the plunge into filmmaking was one that has been a lifetime in the making, but growing up in Saskatoon never really made the dream feel possible. “Film has always been the biggest thing in my life, ever since I was a child, but it just never felt like anything feasible,” he said. “It felt like such a huge undertaking; like it was unmanageable or unachievable.”

So rather than at first risking everything by pursuing his uncertain passion, Oliver shelved his dream for two years to work as a plumber. Interestingly, it was in this job where he received the support he needed to fully commit to his filmmaking dream. “My boss and I would spend all day talking about movies and one day he said ‘Man, you’re a good plumber, but imagine what you could do if you were doing something you really loved,’” Oliver told me. “He was a big support for me.” 

Meanwhile, Sawitsky had gotten involved in visual arts doing cartooning and printmaking, whilst also earning a Bachelor of Education degree in 2021 from USask.

With a foray of unique experiences under their belts, the longtime friends found themselves bonding over low-budget horror films. “We were just hanging out, watching some movies and Mitch opened up about changing trajectory, switching from being a plumber to pursuing film, and perhaps shooting a short film,” Sawitsky explained. “I just said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it!’” And so, The Druid’s Hand project began.

The two began pitching concepts, scrapping ideas, writing and rewriting scripts. “The hook completely changed from the original script,” Oliver told me. “Jesse and I first thought about doing a sandworm movie…. It ended up just growing into something a lot more earnest.”

The duo told me that they utilized the mantra of “write what you know” to make the film, basing it off the Saskatchewan landscape, something they felt helped make the movie stand out in comparison to a lot of other horror movies.

“My family still has a small farm out [in Alveena] so we quickly realized we could just use that for some really cool outdoor locations,” Sawtisky told me. “There is something creepy about farming communities.”

Oliver shared this fascination with small-town eeriness, and talked about how his religious background influenced the film: “I was raised Catholic [and] I went to Catholic schools my entire life. It was something that really fed into the script: theological fear,” Oliver said. “I saw The Exorcist when I was way too young, but that stuff stuck with me more than anything else from other horror movies because I was raised to believe that was real. Horror movie ghosts didn’t bother me as much as the fear of God.”

The two-person team worked with these ideas from early 2021 up until June, when their script was completed. From there it was all about turning ideas into reality. They told me that they started with a Kickstarter in July of that year, relying on crowdfunding and merchandise to raise their $9,000 goal, uncertain if anyone was going to even think twice about their idea. Fortunately for them, Saskatchewan’s art community overwhelmingly came to their support, bringing them a host of talented artists and $17,000 in funding.

“We had a pile of people jump on board before they even really knew what the story was exactly about,” Sawitsky told me, about bringing together the crew behind the film’s production. “We’d hire someone in the make-up department, and they’d tell us about someone they knew who did set-design or live-theatre or has done film and TV stuff in the province. We had 20 people working on the crew by August and we just escalated things and got more ambitious through the help.”

It was this strength in a passionate, committed and talented community that Oliver and Sawitsky really highlighted as the central pillar of The Druid’s Hand. “Nearly all of it was volunteers,” Oliver told me. “People took time away from their families, from work, for four days to build this project because it was exciting. It’s something we’ll be forever grateful for.”

Sawitsky shared the same gratitude for the crew behind the project: “On the first day, a good chunk of us were complete strangers … but in a couple hours we were working like a well-oiled machine,” he said. “Everybody was working 14-, 15-, 16-hour days, but with a smile on their faces the whole time!”

Ultimately, the crew was able to finish the film on schedule and premiere it at Saskatoon’s Dark Bridges Film Festival, hosted at the Broadway Theatre in June of 2022, opening to a sold out crowd of 430 people. From there they showed their film at Portland Horror Film Fest and Montreal Requiem Fear Fest — where they won Best Canadian Horror Short — but the team wasn’t done. Oliver wanted to shoot higher, all the way to Hollywood.

“Screamfest Film Festival is where movies like Paranormal Activity and The Grudge were found. It’s the birthplace of so much, but they’re receiving upwards of 500 submissions a year,” Oliver explained of the film festival circuit’s intricacies. “We never expected to get in.”

Sawitsky had a much different outlook on the film festival scene, until they got in: “After the screening in Saskatoon, I was sort of getting impatient. I just wanted people to be able to watch and see it. When Mitch phoned me about [getting in to] Screamfest, I was nonchalant about it, kind of was just like, ‘That’s cool. What’s Screamfest?’” Sawitsky smiled and then gave a quick laugh. “It dawned on me pretty quick that this was a big deal…. Knowing how important this was, it was a no-brainer that we had to be there to attend.” 

And so the pair, alongside their first assistant director Tara Oliver and editor Jason Hamill (both Saskatchewan natives), made their way to the iconic TCL Chinese Theatre in the heart of Hollywood for Screamfest LA. 

“The first day was spent just laughing at the absolute absurdity of being there,” Sawitsky told me. “On opening night we were down there and we showed up eager, and very early. Very early. It was very Saskatchewan of us, and maybe we weren’t the best dressed, but we were our best dressed,” Sawitsky said with a reminiscent smile. He continued, “We met people from Sweden, Switzerland, from all parts of Europe and across the USA. There were people flying in from all around the globe there for Screamfest. It really set in that it was a huge deal to be there, and probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” 

The Druid’s Hand showed at Screamfest on Oct. 16, 2022 to a sold out crowd of 400 people, reminiscent of its premier at Saskatoon’s Broadway Theatre. Oliver excitedly told me of the “surreal feeling” sitting in the theatre of strangers all reacting, gasping and clapping for the movie. “It was amazing seeing the film in a sold-out theatre in Saskatoon, to people who were just eager to see what we came up with. That was amazing, but that theatre was mostly not made up of horror fans. Screamfest was all horror fans; it was the audience that the film was made for.”

Overall, Oliver and Sawitsky shared their gratitude for both the Saskatchewan art community and the larger horror community, but noted to me that there was something intrinsically special about showing the film to a room full of horror fanatics. “There is more to horror than just the scares. Obviously the scares have to be there, but a good horror movie is more than scares. It’s the tone, the dread, the artistic merit that goes behind them that really makes people excited about it,” Oliver said. “Knowing that we connected with a crowd that we never would have imagined playing in front of was on a whole other level validating. It makes us eager to do it again.”

Since the interview, The Druid’s Hand has continued to show at film festivals throughout the United States and Canada, including the Las Vegas Sin City Horror Fest on Nov. 2, and at Fog Fest in Newfoundland and Labrador which ran from Nov. 11-13. The film has also been nominated for Best Short Film and Best Technical Achievement in Cinematography at this years Saskatchewan Independent Film Awards.
Artistic success stories from Saskatchewan usually seem few and far between, but sometimes all it seems to take is a dream, commitment and love from a community both home and abroad to take artists farther than they can imagine. For The Druid’s Hand crew, it managed to take them from the Land of the Living Skies to the land of film legends and sidewalk superstars.