When he was eight and living on the Dog Creek Indan Reservation north of Winnipeg, Adam Beach's parents both died tragically. They left behind an angry child.

In his new movie Smoke Signals, an all-Native production combining the talents of many of the best Indian actors of both the U.S. and Canada, Beach plays the adult version of a child whose father abandons his family when his son is 10. The boy, named Victor Joseph, grows up sullen and angry.

Smoke Signals, directed by Chris Eyre, a Cheyenne-Arapaho filmmaker from Oregon, and written by Sherman Alexie, a Spokane-Coeur d'Alene novelist from Washington State, opens in Toronto theatres on Friday.

Making the film proved to be a catharsis for the now 25-year-old Beach. "For me, being in Victor's presence allowed me to open up and it revealed to me that I was angry when I was younger," Beach reflects in an interview in The Coloured Stone, an aboriginal restaurant and pool hall in Toronto's nightclub distinct.

"Part of it was that I grew up with a lot of fighting. Being Indian, a lot of people don't like you. So I had to fight for my identity. Also, losing my parents growing up, I kind of blamed them for all of my mistakes."

Unlike Victor in the movie, Beach also possessed a gregarious personality that now makes him one of the most charming, good-hearted and self-effacing young men in the Canadian film business. That was true of him as a child even when he was getting into trouble.

"I had a kindness for people. I was always trying to be helpful and that's personally me," Beach says. It's a quality his character in the movie has to learn the hard way through a journey into his own heart of darkness.

Learning of his father's death in Phoenix, Victor sets out from his reservation in Idaho to investigate. He reluctantly travels with his childhood friend, an eccentric story-teller who was orphaned in a house fire shortly before Victor's father abruptly disappeared. The film is constructed around flashbacks that take both young men back to their pre-teen years together. The relationships are complex.

"I hope when people come to watch this film," Beach says, "that they come very open-minded. When I was growing up, I was always denying my emotions, denying my thoughts. This film is about dealing with that. I hope people will allow themselves to feel the film and flow with the river at the end when it takes you through the maze of emotions.

"I hope that people can get a lot of what I got from the film. We'll see. It's a good film."

In addition to a deepening of self-awareness, Beach will also get another career boost from Smoke Signals. It is getting wider distribution than his marvellous Canadian Native film, Bruce McDonald's Dance Me Outside. Made in the U.S. and picked up by the heavy hitters at Miramax, Smoke Signals is being touted as a hot property. Alliance is releasing it in Canada.

While it is still too early for Beach to gauge the impact, when he goes home to Ottawa to his wife, Meredith Porter, and their two-year-old son Noah, he will have a deep think coming about his career. He feels impatient, restless.

"I'm trying to figure out what direction I should take. I'm kind of stuck on what I want to do and I guess it's a matter of how I want to be perceived. This film reminded me of what I am, where I come from, what I went through, how I got here, what I want and what I don't want.

"But maybe I'm trying to cut the grass too early. I should let it grow a bit." He's young. He has time.


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