SCREEN | Smuggling 'Little Lorraine' x WFF 2024

"I think what they miss the most is showering together."

Whistler Film Festival

Based on crimes committed in 1986, Little Lorraine dramatizes the real-life international offshore cocaine smuggling operation that engulfed the titular Cape Breton seaside fishing village in Nova Scotia. Singer-songwriter (and co-screenwriter) Adam Baldwin previously wrote about the true-crime story in his 2022 single "Lighthouse in Little Lorraine," with its music video successfully serving as a proof-of-concept for the subsequent film.

Starring Stephen Amell and helmed by first-time feature director Andy Hines, Amell's recovering alcoholic Jimmy and his unemployed fellow mine coworkers are soon convinced by his clearly duplicitous Uncle Huey (Stephen McHattie) to "catch lobsters" with little to no fishing experience. However, he and his cohorts soon become accustomed to the easy money despite the talented Colombian singer J Balvin's Interpol agent (in his acting debut) being fast on their heels, looking to dismantle the global drug ring.

It's a compelling true-crime drama with enough East Coast Canadian flavour to its historical ties. Much of the cast, including a few familiar American character actors, captures the authentic vibe of mid-1980s Nova Scotian energy well enough, with earnest performances centred on personal desperation. As an independent Canadian period crime film, it avoids most clichés or genre conventions by focusing on the heart and soul of its sympathetic small-town characters.

Little Lorraine screened at the 2025 Whistler Film Festival as part of the Canadian Features program.


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