Filmmaker Karl Jacob learned how to hunt when he was a child, which inspired his new movie.
Karl Jacob is the writer and director of “Cold November,”[1] a feature film about a 12-year-old girl being raised by women who is taken through her first deer hunt starring the magnetic breakout actress Bijou Abas. The film is available on iTunes, Amazon and Vimeo on Demand now.
The first film I co-directed, “Pollywogs,” played at the LA Film Festival in 2013. There is one scene in the movie where three family members are casually putting away guns after target practice. As a director, this action was a natural choice, since it provided a reasonable backdrop for the conversation the characters were having about a bad breakup that turned angry, but not violent.
After our premiere screening, there were several viewers that were not only taken aback, but wholly disturbed by the casual treatment the guns received in that scene. They also were confused that no one got hurt by one of the weapons. It was in this moment that I started thinking about writing my next project, “Cold November[2].” It’s a story I have been thinking about for almost 22 years, but that moment at LAFF shined light on the need for the story to be told, and a role it could have in illuminating a unique Minnesota childhood, and the culture surrounding it.
I am a socialist-minded vegetarian who lives in New York City, and I own several guns. I have rifles, shotguns and handguns. I use them almost exclusively for target practice at this point, and have acquired all of them legally through an official purchasing processes with background checks or as an inheritance.
“Cold November”
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