In contrast to its snowy environs, the Sundance Film Festival has been responsible for a lot of heat over the years, helping launch, solidify and re-brand the careers of any number of filmmakers and actors. This year’s belle of the ball might have been writer-director Courtney Hunt, whose debut feature, Frozen River, is about a struggling mother of two (Melissa Leo) who gets caught up running illegal immigrants across the border through a secluded Mohawk reservation along the edge of Quebec and upstate New York. The film wowed audiences and won the Grand Jury Prize, with jury member Quentin Tarantino famously confessing that it “put his heart in a vice.” In advance of the movie’s release, I spoke with Hunt recently about the sanctity of the festival experience, the hoity-toity nature of film criticism, and what to do when you fall asleep with the camera rolling. For the full read, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here. More from the interview, and on the movie, next week.