Where Was The Revenant Filmed? Every Major Location Explained

Published 8 hours ago• 10 minute read

. Both sources detail the adventures of the real-life Missouri frontiersman Hugh Glass, specifically how he was able to survive in the wilderness for an extended period following a vicious bear attack. The 1971 Richard Harris film "Man in the Wilderness" was also about Hugh Glass. In Iñárritu's film, Glass was played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who stood opposite the half-mad rival John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). Will Poulter and Domhnall Gleeson also appear.

The film was a giant Oscar darling, being nominated for 12 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It ultimately won for Best Actor (DiCaprio), Best Director (Iñárritu), and Best Cinematography (Lubezki).

"The Revenant" was filmed largely in the snowy outdoor climes of Canada, with some scenes shot in Montana. A few notable sequences were filmed in a snowy portion of Argentina, necessary after the weather began to change in Canada. Below is a rundown of the locations where "The Revenant" was filmed.

Hugh Glass firing a rifle from a boat in The Revenant.

20th Century Fox

The tall waterfall seen in "The Revenant" is actually Kootenai Falls, which is located seven miles northwest of the town of Libby, Montana. According to the falls' tourism website, it is the largest undammed waterfall in all of Montana, and loses 300 feet of elevation during its flow down the Kootenai River. It was named after the local Kootenai nation, which holds the site sacred. The river itself is known as a great spot for fishing. It's a good place to look for bald eagles, black bear, moose, elk, and all manner of northern fauna.

Fun trivia, both the Kootenai River and its Falls were also the shooting location for the Curtis Hanson thriller "The River Wild" from 1994. The movies have brought in some modest tourism dollars to Libby, and I would be interested in visiting the Cabinet Mountain Brewing Company, a local pub and music venue. The beer looks amazing.

The waterfall served as one of the more dramatic backdrops for "The Revenant," even though it was a long way off from the actual Missouri locations were the real-life Hugh Glass hung around. There ahs, of course, been a lot of urban development in the last 200-odd years, though, so the wilds of Missouri were likely not feasible filming locations. Montana made an acceptable substitute. Kootenai Falls was one of the only American locations employed for "The Revenant," however. All off the locations below (save one) can be found in Canada.

Hugh Glass in a tent by a river in The Revenant.

20th Century Fox

The original plan was to shoot the final scenes of the movie, with Hugh Glass next to a snowy river, in Canada along with the rest of the movie. Shooting took so long, however, that summer began to roll around, and the snow began to melt. The filmmakers initially tried carting in extra snow, but that quickly proved to be wasteful and inefficient. Production had to shift to somewhere where winter was still in full swing. Luckily, summer is snowy in the Southern Hemisphere and Iñárritu was able to capture a few vital scenes next to the Río Olivia, located in the mountains north of Ushuaia, a resort town at the southern tip of Argentina, just over the border from Chile.

Shooting in the tourist-heavy area of Tierra del Fuego must have been quite a shift for the cast of "The Revenant" who had spent so much time in the snows of Canada. The final confrontation between Glass and Fitzgerald was filmed there. Iñárritu, however, did a crackerjack job of keeping the look and pacing and lighting largely the same, so only the sharpest-eyed viewers would easily tell the difference. Those familiar with both Argentinian and Canadian flora, however, will likely see the dissimilarities.

Production got to fly into Malvinas Argentinas International Airport, which, trivia buffs may know, is the southernmost international airport in the world. It's where people fly on their way to the South Pole. Ushuaia was a good shooting location for a winter-bound movie, as it remains pretty cold there most of the year.

A team of people running through a river during an ambush in The Revenant.

20th Century Fox

"The Revenant" opens with a battle sequence between the Arikara Nation and a group of fur-dressed trappers. The trappers' makeshift village is attacked by Arikara soldiers, as one of their own people has been kidnapped and is being held inside. The attack scatters the trappers and forces Hugh Glass into the wilderness with compatriots in tow.

The Arikara scenes were filmed at the Stoney First Nations Reserve, nestled inside of Alberta, Canada, and about 200 miles north of the Montana border. It's close to the city of Morley, Alberta. Both are close to a Smitty's Family Restaurant. The Reserve itself houses a casino and other light locations for tourism. It's lush and gorgeous, although it's far from the Arikara lands, located inside of North Dakota and South Dakota, which is about a 12-hour drive to the southeast.

Fans of 1970s cinema might recognize the Stoney First Nation Reserve lands as the location of Robert "M*A*S*H" Altman's somewhat obscure 1976 Western "Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson." But that film hasn't been seen by too many people.

It should also be noted that the visuals in "The Revenant" were accurate, but the First Nation languages and cultures heard on screen were not. A Pawnee character is played by a Navajo actor, for instance. One line of dialogue was dubbed in the Inupiaq language, which is spoken far, far further north, inside of Alaska. The Arikara and Pawnee languages, however, were accurate, provided by specially-hired cultural consultants.

We can debate what "The Revenant" is actually about.

A bear attacking Hugh Glass in The Revenant.

20th Century Fox

The centerpiece of "The Revenant" is a prolonged and brutal bear attack wherein Hugh Glass is mauled viciously by a mama grizzly after Glass unwittingly finds himself in between her and her cubs. Glass, unable to move and near death, is strapped to a stretcher. Fitzgerald suggests that the rest of their hunting party moves on, while he stays behind and waits for a signal from Glass to initiate a mercy killing. Glass cannot speak, but clearly doesn't want to be mercy-killed. This leads to a scene wherein Fitzgerald leans close to Glass and says that he'll perform the mercy killing if Glass blinks, a means of confirmation. The terrified Glass stares him down.

The virtuosic bear attack sequence involved a lot of very good CGI, and Leonardo DiCaprio was tossed around with wires and pulleys to make it look like a bear was tumbling him about. The trees he was slammed into were all prop trees made of rubber, erected just for the shoot. The woods around him, however, were the trees of Derringer Forest, which is located in British Columbia, the next province west from Alberta. More specifically, Iñárritu filmed near the Squamish River, about 30 miles north of the city of Squamish. The filmmakers filmed next to Mount Cayley. For American readers, that's located about a five-hour drive north of Seattle.

Watching a grizzly bear maul a Hollywood actor would, in real life, be more common in British Columbia than in Missouri where "The Revenant" takes place. The bears are commoner in Western Canada than they are down in the Ozarks.

Hugh Glass wincing in pain in The Revenant.

20th Century Fox

Glass ends up evading murder with the help of a tertiary character, but not before witnessing Fitzgerald helplessly murdering his son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck from "Brother"). Glass is left in an uncovered grave.

Before that, however, for a spell, Glass is carried along on a stretcher, healing, regaining strength, and staying alive in defiance to all medical logic. As Glass makes his way to safety, he is carried along a picturesque creek. The bear attack was filmed in the forests of British Columbia, so it should stand to reason that Glass was carried to safety alongside Shovelnose Creek, located in the same province. The creek is located only about 20 miles north of Squamish, so neither Glass nor DiCaprio had to go very far after their respective bear attacks. Notably, the trappers had to carry the injured Glass over a sandbank, and Iñárritu found the perfect spot.

The creek, however, is just a creek. It's not the home to sport-fishing or any nearby resorts. It exists only in its own natural splendor. The name likely comes from a type of First Nation canoe, although it also alludes to a species of shark that lives in the Pacific. The Squamish River flows into the Strait of Georgia, which connects to the Pacific Ocean. The shovelnose frog is out, as that's native to Central and Southern Africa, and the shovelnose sturgeon swims in the Mississippi River.

A shadowy figure by a creek in The Revenant.

20th Century Fox

There is an astonishing scene in "The Revenant" wherein Fitzgerald witnesses a meteor plummeting to Earth, a chunk of it seemingly landing in a river right next to him. It's a glorious symbol for the character's moral fallout. He witnesses his own soul, essentially, falling from Heaven. As Fitzgerald stands next to a river, the meteor falls beyond a crest and crashes just out of sight. The crest may be easily recognized to experienced Canadian outdoorsmen as the badlands of Drumheller (a name that evokes ancient Norse mythology more than Canadian geography).

Drumheller is a small town of about 7,900 people located about 60 miles north of Calgary, Alberta. The town is surrounded by an arid area, full of large, peculiar rock formations called hoodoos. The badlands are a large tourist attraction, and one can visit museums, attend plays, and see concerts at the Badlands Amphitheater. The area is also known for its abundance of dinosaur fossils, and paleontology enthusiasts would definitely want to stop there to see the various dinosaur exhibits at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. The scene has an eerie quality, blending snowy landscapes with desert-like geographical features. It's fitting that Iñárritu should want to go to such an eerie location, wholly different from the wooded wildernesses of the rest of the film.

Drumheller gets hot in the summer, so one can assume that Iñárritu scheduled the shooting accordingly, still wanting snow in his film. The meteor itself, sad to say, was not a natural phenomenon captured on film, but a mere Hollywood special effect.

Hugh Glass holding a gun in the snow in The Revenant.

20th Century Fox

Located about 140 miles west of Drumheller is the Fortress Mountain Resort, a widespread ski lodge with some gloriously large slopes. Although set up for skiing, the resort also has a lot of beautiful mountain views and wooded areas that made perfect backgrounds for "The Revenant." The resort was specifically used for the scenes where Fitzgerald was seen walking alone through the woods. This is a popular spot to film movies, and Leonardo DiCaprio had even been there when he filmed "Inception" with Christopher Nolan. "The Bourne Legacy" also shot scenes there, as did multiple TV commercials. A collection of clips is handily compiled on the resort's website.

Iñárritu once claimed that he shot "The Revenant" in chronological order (that is, the scenes were filmed in the order in which they appear in the final cut), but it seems that if last-minute changes were needed due to bad weather, then the director may be fudging his facts a little bit. Although, given the notorious difficulty of the shoot, and the fact that the initial $60 million budget ballooned to $135 million, it's possible that Iñárritu is telling the truth.

Iñárritu's last feature was 2022's semi-autobiographical "Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths," another hugely ambitious movie that looks terribly expensive (its actual budget was never released to the public). He is currently finishing another as-yet-untitled feature for Warner Bros., slated for release in October of 2026. It will star Tom Cruise and Sandra Hüller opposite John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, Jesse Plemons, and Michael Stuhlbarg.

Cost? No one can say.

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