#FIRSTLOOK: GAME THEORY FILMS BOARD “ALBERTA NUMBER ONE”

Game Theory Films announced today that they have boarded writer-director Alexander Carson’s (O, Brazen Age) sophomore feature film ALBERTA NUMBER ONE for distribution in Canada and the US. The Alberta-shot film from Calgary-based North Country Cinema, will launch in theatres starting November 15th with screenings and Q&As in locations including Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and more locations to be announced.

In ALBERTA NUMBER ONE, an eccentric documentary crew treks across the vast roadways of Alberta, to document monuments, museums, and other roadside curios. Armed with only a loose idea of the project’s final form, the wayward director struggles to manage a slew of messy personal entanglements and rivalries embroiling her collaborators. They look for meaning in the landscape, but their search turns inward as they’re inspired to reckon with their own lives. Directed with a light touch, this charming cross-country odyssey is part revisionist Western and part road movie.

ALBERTA NUMBER ONE asks: What is the contemporary role of museums, institutions that often perpetuate representations of cultural authority? Are these public places complicit in maintaining unequal power relations and existing stereotypes? In the development phase of the film, seven accomplished Canadian artists joined Carson as writing correspondents and collaborators: Benjamin Carson, Bebe Buckskin, Kris Demeanor, Alexandra Lazarowich, Randall Okita, Liz Peterson, and Ingrid Vargas. All of the collaborators stayed with the film, six are featured in the film as the characters they researched and Lazarowich stayed on as Executive Producer.

Alexander (Sandy) Carson is a Canadian filmmaker whose work explores the intersections of collective practice and personal storytelling. Carson’s films have screened at TIFF and the San Francisco International Film Festival, where he received the Golden Gate Award for New Visions in 2014. His critically acclaimed first feature film, O, Brazen Age, was released in 2015, he is a graduate of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University (BFA, MA) in Montreal, and completed his MFA in Creative Practice at Transart Institute, Liverpool John Moores University (UK). He is a founding member of the North Country Cinema media arts collective in Calgary, and holds the position of Chair of the Bachelor of Creative Arts program at Yorkville University. Alexander sophomore feature ALBERTA NUMBER ONE debuted at Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (FNC) in Montreal and premiered in the United States at the 60th Chicago International Film Festival. ALBERTA NUMBER ONE was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature Film at the New Jersey Film Festival at Rutgers University in 2025. Carson was born and raised in Ottawa, lived in Alberta, which inspired the making of the film, and now resides in Toronto.

ALBERTA NUMBER ONE was produced by North Country Cinema, written, directed and produced by Alexander Carson, produced by Sara Corry and Kyle Thomas and cinematography by David Ehrenreich. The film was shot in and around Calgary, Alberta and was produced with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Media Fund, Telefilm Canada and is being distributed by Game Theory films. The film will screen across Canada with dates set in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and more locations and dates to be announced.

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