Making a movie usually involves some level of comfort. Craft services, heated trailers, and green screens are the standard. But Alejandro González Iñárritu isn't exactly a "standard" director. When he set out to make The Revenant, he didn't want a set. He wanted a survival experience. Honestly, the stories coming off that set sounded like a nightmare for the crew, but that gritty, bone-chilling reality is exactly what ended up on screen.
If you’ve watched the film and wondered where did they film The Revenant, you probably assumed it was all shot in some deep, dark corner of the American Midwest where the real Hugh Glass lived.
You’d be wrong.
While the story takes place in the 1820s across the Dakotas and Montana, the production actually spanned three different countries and two continents. They chased the snow across the globe like it was a fleeting dream.
The Canadian Rockies: The Heart of the Chaos
Most of the movie was filmed in the Canadian wilderness. Alberta, specifically. If you’re looking for the specific answer to where did they film The Revenant, start with Kananaskis Country. This is a massive system of parks west of Calgary. It’s rugged. It’s beautiful. It’s also incredibly unforgiving in the dead of winter.
The production spent months in the Bow Valley. This wasn't just about finding a pretty backdrop; Iñárritu and his legendary cinematographer, Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki, insisted on shooting only with natural light.
Think about that for a second.
In the Canadian winter, the sun starts dipping early. By 3:00 PM, you’re losing the light. This meant the crew had maybe a two-hour window every day to actually get the shots they needed. They would spend hours traveling to remote locations—sometimes two hours one way—just to stand in the freezing cold and wait for the "magic hour."
The Stoney First Nations Reserve
The visceral opening sequence where the Arikara party ambushes the trappers? That was filmed at the Chief Goodstoney Rodeo Centre on the Stoney First Nations Reserve near Morley. It’s about 45 miles west of Calgary. They rehearsed that scene for a month. A whole month for one sequence. Because they were doing long, single-take shots with 200 actors, horses, and pyrotechnics, everything had to be a perfect dance. If one person tripped, the whole day was basically shot.
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Fortress Mountain
Then you’ve got the avalanche. You know the one—where the mountain literally seems to crumble behind the characters. That wasn't CGI. They filmed that at Fortress Mountain. They actually flew planes over the peaks to drop explosives and trigger a real avalanche. They had one shot to get it. One take.
They also hauled a massive crane 8,000 feet up that mountain. Imagine the logistics. It’s the kind of old-school filmmaking that feels almost extinct.
Why British Columbia Got the "Gory" Parts
While Alberta handled the wide vistas, British Columbia took the most famous scene of the entire movie: the bear attack.
Leo’s brutal encounter with the grizzly wasn't filmed in the Dakotas or even the high Rockies. It was shot in the Squamish Valley, specifically in the Derringer Forest along the Squamish River.
The forest there is lush and dense. It felt more "pristine" and untouched, which was exactly what Iñárritu wanted for such an intimate, terrifying moment. Even though the bear was a mix of a stuntman in a suit and high-end digital effects, the environment had to be 100% real to sell the horror of it.
DiCaprio spent days being slammed into rubber trees and dragged through the mud in this forest. It was cold. It was wet. He actually got respiratory infections during the shoot. You can see the misery on his face, and honestly, a lot of it probably wasn't acting.
Crossing the Border into Montana
Montana is the only place in the United States that actually made it into the film. If you remember the scene where Glass is swept down a massive, roaring waterfall, you're looking at Kootenai Falls.
It’s located near Libby, Montana.
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Interestingly, this is the same location used for the 1994 Meryl Streep thriller The River Wild. The crew spent about ten days there filming the rapids sequences. It’s one of the largest undammed waterfalls in the Northwest, and it looks absolutely massive on the big screen. To make it look even more desolate, the editors actually layered in footage of snowy hills from Argentina into the background of the Montana shots.
The Argentina Escape: When the Snow Ran Out
This is where the production gets weird.
They were shooting chronologically. Iñárritu wanted the actors to literally age and deteriorate as the story progressed. But because the shoot was so demanding and the natural light window was so small, they fell behind schedule.
Then, the unthinkable happened: the snow melted.
By the time they were ready to film the final, bloody showdown between Hugh Glass and John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), the Canadian spring had arrived. The ground was brown. The "winter" was gone.
Instead of using fake snow—which Iñárritu reportedly hated the idea of—they moved the entire production to the southern tip of the world.
Ushuaia and the Olivia River
They flew to Ushuaia, Argentina, in Tierra del Fuego. It’s one of the southernmost cities on the planet. While North America was heading into summer, Argentina was in the middle of a brutal winter.
The final fight was filmed along the Olivia River.
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It was a logistical nightmare and a budget-destroyer. The film’s cost ballooned from $60 million to over $135 million partly because of this move. But if you watch that final scene, the lighting and the environment are seamless. It looks like the same frozen hell they started in, even though it's thousands of miles away.
The Reality of the "Living Hell"
Crew members famously called the shoot a "living hell." Some quit. Others were fired. There were reports of people being dangerously cold and equipment freezing solid.
The director didn't really deny the hardship. He basically argued that you can't capture the essence of a man surviving the unsurvivable if the actors are sitting in a warm studio in Atlanta.
- No CGI Landscapes: Almost every vista you see is a real place you can visit.
- The Meteorite Scene: That weirdly beautiful shot of the meteorite? Filmed in the Badlands of Drumheller at Horseshoe Canyon, Alberta.
- Fort Kiowa: The trappers' fort was a massive set built at Dead Man’s Flats near Canmore.
The geography of the film is technically "wrong" if you’re a history buff. The real Hugh Glass crawled across the short-grass prairies of South Dakota—flat, rolling hills. The movie makes it look like he climbed the Himalayas. It's "expressionist," as some critics put it. It’s about the feeling of the struggle, not a GPS-accurate map of 1823.
Planning Your Own "Revenant" Tour
If you're actually planning to visit these spots, keep in mind that they are remote. Kananaskis is accessible, but it's "real" wilderness. People get lost. Bears are a real thing.
- Start in Calgary: It’s the easiest hub. Most locations are within a two-hour drive.
- Visit Elbow Falls: It’s an easy stop in Kananaskis and appears as a backdrop in several transition shots.
- Check out Drumheller: The Badlands look like another planet and provide a nice break from the mountain scenery.
- Respect the Land: Many of these sites, like the Stoney Reserve or Kootenai Falls, have deep cultural and spiritual significance to Indigenous nations. Don't just show up and start filming TikToks without being mindful of where you are.
The film serves as a massive advertisement for the raw beauty of the Canadian Rockies, even if it makes you never want to go camping again. Whether it’s the jagged peaks of Fortress Mountain or the icy waters of the Olivia River, the answer to where did they film The Revenant is basically: wherever the weather was most likely to kill them.
For those interested in the technical side, look up the work of Emmanuel Lubezki. He won his third consecutive Oscar for this film, and once you see the locations in person, you realize that half of his job was just surviving the environment long enough to press the shutter.
Next time you watch it, pay attention to the transition between the forest and the final river fight. You're watching a jump from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere in the blink of an eye. It’s a testament to how far a director will go to avoid using a green screen.