‘Thunderbird’: New indie film stars former Kelowna Secondary School grad

A former Kelowna Secondary School grad is about to get his big break.

Colten Wilke is starring in a new feature film called Thunderbird, which is set for release on Friday

“It’s a bit of a mystery, kind of supernatural drama,” director Nicholas Treeshin told Global News.

“But these two main characters have to work together to kind of solve the mystery, solve the crime.”

One of the film’s main characters is Will Brook, a man with a haunting past, and is deftly played by Colten Wilke, who grew up in Kelowna.

“The supernatural aspect of the Thunderbird sphere kind of looms over the whole film,” Wilke said.

“As we get into Will’s mindset and his dark history, he is kind of plagued by these dark forces that he sees in his mind.”

Without going into too many spoiler alerts, the spiritual incarnation of those dark forces is the legendary Indigenous Thunderbird.

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The new film is actually Wilke’s first foray into acting, a craft he was first introduced to at KSS.

“I got a little bit of a taste in high school, but it really wasn’t enough to pursue it,” Wilke explained.

But Wilke doesn’t want to be defined as just an actor.

He’s an aspiring filmmaker who’s willing to do whatever it takes to best serve the narrative of the story he’s looking to tell — whether it’s screenwriting, directing or cinematography.

“I’m just really eager to tell great stories and make authentic kind of indie features,” said Wilke.

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That’s why Wilke’s now busy unravelling the tale of a train that disappeared into Slocan Lake in 1947.

It’s a feature-length documentary with the working title ‘The Shipwrecked Hogger.’

Wilke says the project was partly inspired by Gold Trails and Ghost Towns — a show Wilke says he grew up watching on the Okanagan’s Very Own CHBC, now Global Okanagan.

“We wanted to make a documentary that can bring that kind of old storytelling and mix that with some new-age technology of finding this old relic,” he said.

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That’s not to say if Hollywood comes calling for a leading man, Wilke won’t answer the call.

Still, he said his passion lies in “finding the stories that I would like to be behind, and finding where I fit best to help with that.”

Thunderbird starts streaming Friday on Amazon Prime.