Maja Aro wants to reintroduce you to some iconic fairytale characters you only thought you knew.
Aro is well known in the local film and TV scene for her work as a stunt artist. Her lengthy credit list includes big-budget films (like Godzilla, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, and next year’s War for the Planet of the Apes) and television (The Flash, The X-Files, Arrow, Supernatural, and The Man in the High Castle). She’s been nominated for a Taurus World Stunt Award and two UBCP/ACTRA Awards, and is currently the stunt coordinator on ABC’s hit fantasy series, Once Upon a Time, where she’s stunt-doubled the character of Snow White for six seasons.
In the last two years, Aro has also co-directed a couple of shorts, but with her new short film, Hoods, Aro is stepping out – or, given her day job, maybe “smashing through a second-storey window” is more appropriate – for the first time as a solo director and writer. And, given her day job, it makes sense that her first solo effort is a celebrity-packed action-fantasy with roots in the worlds of fairytales, English folklore, and dieselpunk.
“You write what you’re surrounded by, and working on Once Upon a Time and The Man in the High Castle last summer did influence my writing, absolutely,” says Aro in a recent interview.
In Hoods – which premieres Dec. 3 at the Whistler Film Festival – Aro introduces audiences to a character named Scarlet Hood (portrayed by Eva Bourne of When Calls the Heart) loosely based on a familiar character from fairytale land. “She’s inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, but she’s not really Little Red Riding Hood, although the iconic cape does come out,” says Aro. Hoods derives some inspiration from the fairytale sphere, “but it is also this dark, gritty, dieselpunk, alternate-1940s fantasy world.”
Hoods’ cast includes a trio of veteran Vancouver actors: Aleks Paunovic (The 100), Ty Olsson (Continuum), and Gabrielle Rose (The Sweet Hereafter), the latter of whom plays a character inspired by another iconic character with a hood.
“The day I decided Robin Hood was a woman was the day Hoods was actually born,” says Aro. “That’s when I decided that Scarlet’s last name was Hood, and Robyn Hood was her grandmother. That became the story, and then it became Hoods.”
The short alludes to a larger Hoods world – including the tangled histories of Robyn Hood and the seething Frederick Wolfe (portrayed by Paunovic) – by design. Hoods is intended to serve as the origin story for Scarlet Hood, and the kick-off to a series of screen projects exploring a larger fantasy universe.
Speaking of origin stories: Hoods’ own origin story is tied up with the very festival at which it will premiere. In 2015, Aro was one of five directors selected to pitch a film project as part of MPPIA’s annual WFF Short Film Award competition, in which the top prize was $100,000 in funds and in-kind production services required to bring the proposed film from concept to completion. Aro won with her Hoods pitch, at which point her filmmaking journey began in earnest.
Filming occurred over a couple of weekends this past summer. Aro and co. shot in five locations around Gastown, at a retro garage in Squamish, a cabin in North Vancouver, and in a hotel room and hallway Aro, her dad, and her husband Jeff Aro (a fellow stunt artist and coordinator who served as executive producer and editor on the project) built in the Aro basement (Hoods was a true-blue family affair: her mother catered the project and sewed some of the 1940s- and dieselpunk-inspired costumes).
“It doesn’t look like a little indie film,” says Aro. “For our budget, we got really good production value.”
And there’s action: a fight scene; an array of weapons, including knives and arrows and dieselpunk firearms; and a long shot of a vintage bike careening behind Gastown.
It’s Aro; there was always going to be action.
“Hoods is a fun ride,” quips Aro. “It’s an action-fantasy, with the emphasis on fantasy. It’s a movie I want to watch. And I learned that this is definitely what I want to do.”
Whistler Film Festival runs Nov. 30-Dec. 4 at locations around Whistler Village. The packed schedule includes 50 features and 36 shorts from 18 countries exhibited on seven screens at five venues over five days.
Locally shot shorts on the schedule include The Highway, Guilt Trip, Bombing, Tree Huggers, Drifter, Soulmates, I'm Ready, The Man on the Stairs, Let Us End With It Too, In the Blink of an Eye, Haley, The Goodnight Kiss, the Canon Hi5 films, and Crazy8s stand-out I Love You So Much It's Killing Them.
Tickets and details at WhistlerFilmFestival.com.
