Emma Thompson called her character in Brian Kirk ’s film “ Dead of Winter ” a “real life heroine” during a conversation at Locarno Film Festival on Friday.

“We seem to be telling an awful lot of stories about the super rich or about the dark side of human nature, and this woman’s life, this ordinary humble life, is so beautiful and so rich,” Thompson said of the film. “She’s able to say: ‘I’m able to let it go to let someone else find herself.’ It’s a story of her love.”

In the action thriller, she plays a widowed woman who just wanted to go fishing in snowbound Minnesota. Instead, she finds herself in the middle of a kidnapping plot. Thompson also executive produced the film.

Written by Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb, both from Minnesota, it pays homage to the “amazing

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