Year: 2024
Runtime: 83 mins
Starring: Liz Peterson, Bebe Buckskin, Ingrid Vargas, Randall Okita, Kris Demeanor, Benjamin Carson
Producers: Alexander Carson, Sara Corry, Kyle Thomas
Writer/Director: Alexander Carson
Alberta Number One is the latest feature film by writer/director Alexander Carson (O, Brazen Age) and the producing team at North Country Cinema.
Alberta Number One is a contemporary revisionist Western. Instead of guns, the characters brandish movie cameras and microphones as they explore the disjointed, sometimes dangerous “wild west” of Alberta’s museums and roadside attractions. Punctuated by moments of extraordinary tenderness and unexpected violence, Alberta Number One invokes poetry, magic, and prayer to imagine a more radical, caring form of wildness on Canada’s Western frontier.
“Alexander Carson has been quietly building one of the most beguiling, sui generis filmographies in English Canadian cinema. With Alberta Number One, Carson crafts a polyphonic story in collaboration with the ensemble while bringing his slyly digressive, essayistic personal style to bear on the western and road-trip film. The film deftly speaks to the limits of academia, art, and museology to reckon with the painful legacies of our collective past, as well as those of our living present.” — Jordan Tannahill, author of The Listeners
Notable Screenings
Festival du Nouveau Cinéma Montréal (2024) – World Premiere
Chicago International Film Festival (2024) – US Premiere
Awards
New Jersey Film Festival (2025) – Grand Jury Prize: Best Feature Film
Praise for Alberta Number One
“Alexander Carson has been quietly building one of the most beguiling, sui generis filmographies in English Canadian cinema. With Alberta Number One, Carson crafts a polyphonic story in collaboration with the ensemble while bringing his slyly digressive, essayistic personal style to bear on the western and road-trip film. The film deftly speaks to the limits of academia, art, and museology to reckon with the painful legacies of our collective past, as well as those of our living present.” –Jordan Tannahill, author of The Listeners
“Alberta Number One is an immensely enjoyable film, capturing the adventures of a film crew exploring the museums, monuments, and roadside attractions of Canada, striving to find the truth together… A sweet, heartwarming and poignant road trip movie questioning art, togetherness, and the responsibility of our collective cultural imagination, with layers of emotion and connection unveiling on the ride.” –Emma Hackbarth, New Jersey Stage
