History was made on Friday when the film The Snake premiered at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, the first movie from Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.) to do so. Directed by Jenna MacMillan, starring beloved Canadians, including Susan Kent (who also wrote the film), Jonathan Torrens, Robin Duke, Emma Hunter and Drag Race icon Jimbo, The Snake shows a side of Charlottetown that’s been missing in entertainment.
“It fills me with so much joy to see the streets I grew up on, and to see Charlottetown and P.E.I. in this light, and to bring it to a festival like this. It truly means the world to me,” MacMillan, who worked as a producer before making her feature directorial debut with The Snake, told Yahoo Canada. “It was important for me that you wouldn’t be like, ‘Oh, they’re on P.E.I.’ … Islanders that have watched it have been amazed to see Charlottetown in a different light. So that also fills me with a weird sort of pride too, … seeing my home depicted in an authentic light, that I see every day.”
“Something that was really hard for me was not to show the water earlier. … The water is gorgeous, and it’s only that one shot. It’s a very landlocked movie. … I just sort of tried to capture my day-to-day of how I see Charlottetown, and that it is beautiful, but there’s also an ugliness to it. There are normal people, real people, going through their lives. It’s not necessarily a tourism commercial. … I wanted to be very disciplined … to let the audience see the beauty as Jamie’s starting to see the beauty again as well.”
Susan Kent (L) and Daniel Petronijevic (R) in THE SNAKE, premiering at SXSW. (Club Red Productions)
‘Ungovernable women’
The film follows Jamie (Kent), a woman who just can’t catch a break. She has an incredibly volatile relationship with her mother, played by Duke, romantic relationships are a bust, and she’s trying to cope with the reality that she’s been evicted from the pink house that belonged to her late grandmother. It’s through Jamie that we get to the core of what The Snake is about, a true and authentic story about “ungovernable women,” and not shown through the lens of a male perspective.
“[It] was so important to us that we not point to, ‘Look how f—ked up she is.’ … I wanted to lean into who she is and just really invite people in to watch her, and going through, in sometimes an uncomfortable way, just how much more can happen to her,” MacMillan said. “And also to lean into the fact that, I think at the onset, you’re thinking like, oh, she’s making so many bad decisions. But then you can kind of see where it’s coming from. … That wanting to be loved, wanting to be understood, wanting to be valued and cherished, and then dealing with a lot of disappointment.”
“That is very real and authentic for all of us, and so it was important that we just stayed really true to Jamie.”
Jenna MacMillan
Jenna MacMillan got ‘choked up’ shooting this sequence
For MacMillan’s direction of the film, she used so many compelling and interesting shots and sequences to tell this story. With MacMillan also proving to be such an effective visual storyteller.
And it starts right at the beginning of The Snake, when we see Jamie walking down the middle of a street, carrying garbage bags with her belongings in both hands. There’s no dialogue, but what we see says so much about the state of her life at that moment.
“So many sequences in the movie she’s walking and she’s just trying to get herself together, and get to the next place, and she’s always on the move,” MacMillan explained. “So I think that the idea of that shot, much to the chagrin of Melani [Wood], my first AD [assistant director] and producer, was, I want her in the middle of the street. I want her to not be thinking about anything else, … she’s so shocked and unrooted right now, and just trying to get to the next point.”
And then, at the end of the movie, there’s another sequence of Jamie walking, this time showing how far she’s come in the story, and it’s a moment that was particularly affecting for the film’s director.
“It was very deliberate. I wanted it to feel so different,” MacMillan said. “It was the second last day of the shoot, … and I kind of choked up when I saw her, because when she showed up on set, she was so healthy looking. Jamie, throughout the journey, … she’s going through it. She hasn’t slept. … She hasn’t showered. … But when she showed up, I kind of got a little choked up.”
AUSTIN, TEXAS – MARCH 13: (L-R) Emma Hunter, Robin Duke, Sharlene Kelly, Jenna MacMillan, Bill Lundy, Susan Kent, Dan Petronijevic, Kevin A Fraser and Melani Wood of “The Snake” pose for a portrait during the Getty Images Portrait Studio presented by IMDb and IMDbPro at SXSW 2026 on March 13, 2026 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Robby Klein/Getty Images for IMDb)
(Robby Klein via Getty Images)
Reflecting on collaborating with so many comedy legends on The Snake, MacMillan stressed that she admires all the actors and highlighted the joy of working with them on a film that also gives them emotional moments to craft.
“Like Robin Duke, watching her SNL sketch and then working with her, it was so phenomenal,” MacMillan said. “But the thing that really blew my mind is, so often you see Emma Hunter or Jonathan Torrens or Dan Petronijevic, they play such goofballs, but understanding that they can be so grounded and so tender and sweet.”
“I always appreciate actors as a producer, but seeing how they could just show up and be dialled in immediately, … I’m so grateful for this cast. And it also felt really cool to see a lot of them playing outside of the type that they normally would play.”
The Snake has additional SXSW screenings on March 16 and March 18
