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| Smudge the Blades | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Cody Lightning |
| Written by | Cody Lightning Samuel Miller |
| Produced by | Sara Corry Dylan Jackknife Morin Hayley Morin Kyle Thomas |
| Starring | Ed Helms Paulina Alexis Jana Schmieding |
| Cinematography | Liam Mitchell |
| Edited by | Lev Lewis Thomas Hackett |
| Music by | Matthew Cardinal Marek Tyler |
Production companies | Lightning Mill North Country Cinema |
Release date |
|
Running time | 96 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
Smudge the Blades is a 2026 Canadian sports comedy-drama film. Directed by Cody Lightning, the film centers on the Treaty 6 Blades, an Indigenous youth ice hockey team. [1]
The film first announced casting for Indigenous actors to play the hockey team in 2024, [2] and was shot in Edmonton, Alberta, in spring 2025. [3]
The film premiered in the Centrepiece program at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. [4]
For That Shelf, Pat Mullen wrote that "While Lightning’s sophomore feature shows a little more room to grow behind the camera, the jump from Hey, Viktor! to Blades shows considerable promise. Smudge the Blades excels whenever Lightning holds the camera’s attention. That confidence, however, doesn’t quite translate to the lens’s focus with the other players. The film’s a little rough around the edges with the rest of the team when it comes to the synergy between the technical elements and the star power, but when Lightning transfers his relationship with the camera to his co-stars, he’s looking at whatever the hockey equivalent of a grand slam is. (I don’t know sports metaphors.)" [5]
At TIFF, the film won the Best Canadian Discovery Award, [6] with Lightning dedicating much of his acceptance speech to a tribute to his mother, actress Georgina Lightning, who died just a few days before the film's TIFF premiere. [7]
The film won the Best Narrative Feature Jury Award at the 2026 Santa Fe International Film Festival. [8]
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