'Earth mother' tries to save her struggling marijuana business in indie film 'Freeland'

While the COVID-19 pandemic upended release plans for many movies big and small, it did make the subject matter for some even more relevant.

Take “Freeland,” an indie film about a longtime marijuana farmer whose business model and sole source of income is being threatened by legalization. “Freeland” explores how people cope when their entire way of life is turned upside down overnight, and a global pandemic adds an extra layer of resonance to its story.

“It is about a woman who has worked really hard her whole life, and she’s about to lose everything through no fault of their own,” said Krisha Fairchild, 70, who plays Devi, the marijuana farmer in “Freeland.”

“To me, the fact we couldn’t do our festival run in theaters was so symbolic because the world was going through something on a much larger scale.

“People may not have had something to relate to before, but now they do. That for me is the most important message of our movie, that those things can happen, and then it happened to the whole rest of the world.”

“Freeland” opened the 2020 Three Rivers Film Festival and is now available via video on demand. It will also enjoy a short theatrical run at Lawrenceville’s Row House Cinema starting Friday and continuing through Dec. 16. On Dec. 14, the theater will host an in-person interview with producer and Oakland resident Laura Heberton. The seasoned film producer said that “Freeland” will be the first film she’s worked on to screen in her hometown.

“[I always said] I’ll know I’ve really made it when one of my films has had a week’s run here in Pittsburgh,” Heberton said. “So I hope everyone comes out and supports it.”

The film comes from writer-director duo Mario Furloni and Kate McLean, who decided that a documentary project they worked on about a decade ago could also work as a narrative feature. Furloni, who also served as the film’s cinematographer, was always more interested in marijuana farmers than the product itself. When many states began legalizing it, he and McLean agreed that focusing on one farmer’s plight would be a fascinating character study.

“We didn’t feel like we would do justice approaching it as a documentary,” Furloni said.

“The access was not quite there at the time. So we started working on a fiction script based on the reality that we had reported.”

When Heberton came across “Freeland,” she was immediately intrigued by “a world I didn’t know” that “felt like this foreign country within the U.S., a real wild west.” She took an active role in polishing the script, filling out the cast and crew, overseeing fundraising efforts and grant applications, marketing the final product and applying to get the film into festivals.

Fairchild also starred in the 2015 film “Krisha” that was written and directed by her nephew, Trey Edward Shults of “Waves” fame. When she received the script for “Freeland” in 2016, she was instantly drawn to the “earth mother” character of Devi, who represented “a path I absolutely could have been on,” she said.

Shooting mostly took place in northern California in August and September 2018. Furloni and McLean opted to film on real marijuana farms during harvest season to make everything look and feel as authentic as possible. To feed the cast and crew, Heberton said she had burnt almond tortes from Prantl's Bakery shipped to California.

“Those tortes just might have come in handy had there been any sudden onset of the munchies, but I can neither confirm nor deny that,” she joked.

Heberton works with a lot of up-and-coming filmmakers on their passion projects, including the 2021 Three Rivers Film Festival documentary “Now Return Us to Normal” by Bellevue resident Leslie Koren.

She hopes Pittsburghers show up at Row House to learn why she believes so strongly in the cinematic and thematic potential of “Freeland.”

“We already felt the film was timely before the pandemic,” she said.

“It’s a really beautiful piece of indie filmmaking and I really think it would be fantastic if people came out to see it.”