Ollie (Tessa Thompson) is abruptly awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of someone’s knocking on her door. Dale (Brandon Potter) stops by her house after his shift hoping that he can buy Oxy from her. But Ollie has stopped dealing for months after she was caught on the border with her mom’s medication for illegal crossing between North Dakota and Canada. Ollie doesn’t have any drugs for Dale’s injury, so she tells him to get his foot checked at the hospital. Dale already went to the hospital and waited for six hours, but he finally had to leave to work his next shift. Dale isn’t the only one who has this kind of experience, all he wants is something for the pain so he can go back to work. Ollie only has ten days left on her probation, so she can’t risk implicating herself in another crime.

Oxycontin (Oxy) is a brand of prescription drug Oxycodone, an opioid medication used for treatment of moderate to severe pain. It is highly addictive and is commonly used recreationally by people who have an opioid use disorder.

Ollie’s sister, Deb (Lily James), is a single mother living in an illegally parked trailer, raising her son Johnny (Charlie Ray Reid) on her own. She doesn’t have a good relationship with her unreliable partner, Ian (James Badge Dale), whom she discovers she’s pregnant with.

Ollie considers moving away and letting go of the house, which is foreclosed, if she gets a job in Spokane, Washington. However, she decides to sign the house over to Deb when she learns Deb is pregnant with Ian. Now, to keep the house, Ollie needs to find a way to make $3,000 USD within a week.

Seeing no other way to make quick money, Ollie dives back into the game of dealing prescription drugs. She contacts Ian to help distribute the 500 pills she has stashed in the woods. Ian promises to find customers but insists Ollie do the dealing herself.

Local drug dealer Bill (Luke Kirby) gets angry when he discovers that Ollie is back in the business despite the fact that she said she wouldn’t sell again. Bill offers Ollie two options: keep selling and pay him a 30% cut, or do a run across the border for him.

Ollie, afraid her parole officer Carter (Lance Reddick) would find out about the drugs after his unannounced visit, puts the drugs and the money in her backpack and hides it in Deb’s trailer. Deb, upon realizing that being pregnant without insurance costs $8,000, decides she doesn’t want to keep the baby. The problem is, the closest place for an abortion is hundreds of miles away.

Written and directed by American filmmaker Nia DaCosta, LITTLE WOODS is a very impressive directorial debut. I love how the film chooses to avoid judgment of its characters, and as the story unfolds, we come to understand the motivations behind their choices.

Tessa Thompson and Lily James deliver career-best performances. You can literally see their characters’ struggles in their eyes and body language, sometimes without a word spoken. The supporting cast is equally impressive, with James Badge Dale and Luke Kirby standing out. LITTLE WOODS is a must-watch film. It’s rare these days to find a compelling narrative that doesn’t rely on violence or gratuitous elements like blood, rape, or dead people.

LITTLE WOODS premiered at Tribeca Film Festival on 21 April 2018. NEON acquired the rights for U.S. distribution, the film was theatrically released in the United States on 19 April 2019.