Where Was The Revenant Filmed? 7 Locations and How to Visit

The Revenant was filmed mostly in Alberta, Canada, in Kananaskis Country and the Bow Valley west of Calgary. The bear attack was shot in BC’s Squamish Valley. The rapids escape was filmed at Kootenai Falls in Montana, and the final fight on the Olivia River in Argentina.

None of it was filmed in the Dakotas, where the real story took place.

Alejandro G. Iñárritu shot the film from autumn 2014 to summer 2015, using only natural light. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a fur trapper mauled by a bear and left for dead. Tom Hardy plays John Fitzgerald, the man who leaves him.

This guide covers all 7 Revenant filming locations, the true story behind the film, the Canadians who made it, and how to visit each spot.

#	Location	Scene	Can you visit?	Nearest town
7	Horseshoe Canyon, Drumheller Badlands, Alberta	The meteor	Yes. Roadside canyon with trails, spring to fall	Drumheller
6	Kootenai Falls, Montana	Glass escapes down the rapids	Yes. Free forest site with a swinging bridge	Libby
5	Stoney Nakoda lands, Morley, Alberta	The opening ambush	From public roads only. It’s reserve land	Morley / Cochrane
4	Near Canmore, Alberta	Fort Kiowa	The area, yes. The fort was a temporary set	Canmore
3	Olivia River, Ushuaia, Argentina	The final fight	Yes. The valley is visible from the highway	Ushuaia
2	Kananaskis Country and Fortress Mountain, Alberta	Mountains, rivers and the avalanche	Kananaskis, yes (pass needed). Fortress is cat-ski only	Canmore
1	Squamish Valley, BC	The bear attack	The lower valley, yes. No marked bear site	Squamish

The 7 Revenant Filming Locations

The countdown runs from the smallest stop to the most famous scene in the film.

7) The Drumheller Badlands, Alberta

The crew went east of Calgary to the Badlands for a short stint at Horseshoe Canyon.

Inverse and Atlas of Wonders place the meteor scene in the Drumheller Badlands. Travel Alberta says the production spent “a stint at Horseshoe Canyon.” The striped, bare hills look nothing like the Rockies, which is why they stand out in the film.

The trail to the floor is gentle, but the clay gets slippery when wet. Drumheller is 17 km further east, and the Royal Tyrrell Museum is just outside town, so you can make a full day of it.

6) Kootenai Falls, Montana

The only US location is a waterfall on the Kootenai River near Libby, Montana.

The Flathead Beacon reported that two stuntmen in bearskin coats over wetsuits went through the water, filmed from a camera hung under a helicopter. A raft crew from Missoula ran a camera through the Class IV to V rapids below the falls. “The main cast wasn’t there,” one rafter told Paddling Life. The paper says DiCaprio did his own water work in tanks in Hollywood.

Today the falls are a free US Forest Service site. Park at mile marker 21. A rough half-mile trail leads over the railway, down 64 steps and out to a swinging bridge across the river. The new 220-foot bridge opened in 2019. The falls are sacred to the Kootenai people, so treat them with respect.

5) Stoney Nakoda Lands Near Morley, Alberta

The film’s opening ambush was shot on Stoney Nakoda First Nation land, about 60 km west of Calgary.

Inverse reported that the opening attack “was actually filmed in Morley, Alberta.” CTV Calgary also confirmed scenes on the Stoney Nakoda First Nation. Iñárritu told American Cinematographer he shot it “like a live performance,” with the camera moving through the battle.

This is reserve land, not a park. Drive past on Highway 1 or 1A and stay on public roads. For a public stop, the Historic Morleyville site and the McDougall Memorial Church sit beside Highway 1A, with an interpretive trail.

4) Fort Kiowa, Near Canmore, Alberta

Production designer Jack Fisk built Fort Kiowa from scratch in the Rockies near Canmore.

“We build the entire fort,” Fisk told The Arts Desk. That meant a palisade, an office, a mess hall, bunks and a trading room. HuffPost Canada reported that he gathered old lumber so the fort would look weathered and real.

Sources disagree on the exact spot. HuffPost Canada points to the Spray Valley, up the Spray Lakes Road southwest of Canmore. Inverse says the Bow Valley. Atlas of Wonders says Dead Man’s Flats, a hamlet just east of town on Highway 1. Either way, Canmore is your base, and both areas are open to visitors.

3) The Olivia River, Ushuaia, Argentina

The final fight between Glass and Fitzgerald was filmed at the bottom of the world.

The production needed snow for the last scenes, and Alberta’s winter had gone mild. “The snow melted down, literally, in front of our eyes,” Iñárritu said in July 2015. So the crew shut down and went south to Argentina, where it was winter. DiCaprio arrived in Ushuaia on 29 July 2015.

Not everyone was happy. Argentine paper Diario de Cuyo reported that some locals criticised the crew for widening the riverbed and planting fake pines. Today you can see the Olivia valley from the highway outside Ushuaia. Chilean news site BioBioChile reported that DiCaprio stopped for soup at Almacén de Ramos Generales in town.

2) Kananaskis Country and Fortress Mountain, Alberta

Most of The Revenant was shot in Kananaskis Country, the mountain parks west of Calgary.

The Daily Hive counted 28 Alberta filming locations, and most sit in or near Kananaskis. The biggest stunt came on Fortress Mountain. Screen Daily reported that the crew took horses and a crane about 8,000 feet up. Then explosives triggered a real avalanche, filmed in one take.

The rivers were a problem too. The Bow, Kananaskis and Elbow rivers ran too low. Meteorologist Jordan Witzel told HuffPost Canada that the producers paid hydro dams to raise them. Most of Kananaskis is open to visitors with a pass. Fortress Mountain itself has been closed to public skiing since the mid-2000s. The only way up in winter is a guided cat-skiing trip, so take in the view from Highway 40 instead.

1) The Squamish Valley, British Columbia

The bear attack, the most famous scene in the film, was shot in a BC rainforest near the Squamish River.

The Hollywood Reporter says the live action for the attack was filmed “in a rainforest near the Squamish River” over three to four days. Hollywood North Buzz named the spot the Derringer Forest and said the shoot was “marred by torrential rains.” The stretcher scene, where the men haul Glass over a sandbar, was shot nearby at Shovelnose Creek.

There was no real bear. DiCaprio did most of it himself, on a harness, yanked around by stunt crew on ropes. Vancouver stunt performer Glenn Ennis says he played the bear in a blue suit, with a foam bear head on a lacrosse helmet. He dislocated a finger on the first day and kept going, Canadian Press reported. ILM, the film’s lead effects house, then animated the grizzly over the footage.

Where Does The Revenant Take Place?

The Revenant takes place in 1823, on the rivers of the northern Great Plains in what is now the Dakotas. The real Hugh Glass was attacked by a grizzly in late summer that year, near the forks of the Grand River in present-day Perkins County, South Dakota.

Glass was a trapper with William Ashley and Andrew Henry’s fur company. His companions left him for dead and took his rifle. He then made his way about 200 miles over about six weeks to Fort Kiowa on the Missouri River, near present-day Chamberlain, South Dakota.

So why not film there? The film needed snow and mountains, and the plains have neither. “North Dakota is prairieland,” supervising location manager Robin Mounsey told Screen Global Production. Alberta offered peaks, rivers and prairie, all within a few hours of Calgary.

How much of the film is true? The bear attack, the betrayal and the long journey back are real. The rest is mostly invented. The Hugh Glass site run by the Museum of the Mountain Man says, “There is no evidence Glass had an Indian wife or mixed-race son.” The real Glass didn’t kill Fitzgerald either. He let him go and got his rifle back.

You can visit the real setting. Historical markers at Shadehill Reservoir, south of Lemmon, South Dakota, tell the story near the forks of the Grand River. The old 1923 stone monument moved to Bancroft, Nebraska, in 2023.

The Canadians of The Revenant

The Revenant is an American film. But it was made in Canada, largely by Canadians.

Up to 700 crew and extras worked on the Alberta shoot, according to Radio Canada International. Extras came from First Nations including Tsuu T’ina, Sunchild and Maskwacis. When DiCaprio won his Golden Globe, he chose to “share this award with all the First Nations people represented in this film.”

The cast:

• Isaiah Tootoosis plays young Hawk, Glass’s son, in the flashbacks. He was 8, from the Poundmaker Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, and it was his first film. He’s the great-grandson of actor Gordon Tootoosis and NHL player Fred Sasakamoose. After seeing the film, he told CBC, “I started crying, ’cause I was proud of myself.” The older Hawk is played by Forrest Goodluck, who is American.
• Grace Dove plays Glass’s wife. She’s Secwépemc, from the Canim Lake Band in BC’s Cariboo, and grew up in Prince George. “This film took me to the end of the world, and back,” she wrote on Instagram.
• Duane Howard plays Elk Dog, the Arikara leader searching for his daughter. He’s Nuu-chah-nulth, born on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
• Melaw Nakehk’o plays Powaqa, Elk Dog’s daughter. She’s Dene, from Fort Simpson in the Northwest Territories.
• Brendan Fletcher (Fryman) was born in BC’s Comox Valley. Robert Moloney (Dave Stomach Wound) was born in Calgary.

Behind the camera, four Canadians earned Oscar nominations for the film:

• Hamish Purdy of North Vancouver, for Production Design with Jack Fisk
• Cameron Waldbauer of Pitt Meadows, for Visual Effects
• Chris Duesterdiek of Vancouver, for Sound Mixing
• Edmonton-born Robert Pandini, for Makeup and Hairstyling

“That just shows the whole world what we’re capable of in Vancouver,” Waldbauer told CBC.

How Cold Was It? Filming The Revenant

Very cold. Several sources put the coldest days at minus 40. Robert Pandini, who did the hair for most of the cast, said the coldest day on his set hit minus 37. “I’m lucky, I’m from Canada, so I’m used to the cold,” he said.

Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki shot with natural light only, and mostly in story order. American Cinematographer says the usable light ran from about 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The shoot ran long and over budget:

• The schedule: It started in autumn 2014 and was meant to wrap in spring. It finished in August 2015 in Argentina.
• The budget: It grew from $60 million to about $135 million.
• The crew: The head of local crew union IATSE 212 told the Calgary Herald that 15 to 20 members were fired or quit.
• The weather: A mild winter melted the snow. Global Calgary meteorologist Jordan Witzel was hired to watch the weather at 11 or more locations.

DiCaprio called it one of the “toughest films I’ve ever been a part of.” Even so, Iñárritu said, “There were no injuries in all the film, at all.”

How to Visit The Revenant Locations

You can see most of the Alberta sites in two days from Calgary. Squamish and Kootenai Falls are separate trips.

Day 1: The Rockies loop from Calgary

1. Morley. Drive west on Highway 1A past the Stoney Nakoda lands, about 60 km. Stop at Historic Morleyville and stay on public roads.
2. Canmore and the Spray Valley. Buy a Kananaskis Conservation Pass first. Take the Spray Lakes Road (Highway 742) south from Canmore. It’s about 60 km of gravel to Kananaskis Lakes, past Engadine Meadow.
3. Fortress Mountain. Head north on Highway 40 past Fortress Junction for the view. The resort itself is closed.
4. Elbow Falls. Loop back to Calgary through Bragg Creek on Highway 66. Check Alberta 511 for seasonal closures first.

Day 2: The Badlands

Drive about 120 km northeast to Horseshoe Canyon on Highway 9. Then carry on to Drumheller and the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Kootenai Falls: Libby is about 6 hours from Calgary by car, across the US border. Plan it as part of a Montana road trip.

Squamish: Squamish is about an hour north of Vancouver on the Sea to Sky Highway (Highway 99). Winter tires are required from 1 October to 31 March. The Squamish River Forest Service Road into the upper valley is closed at km 21.7 for fall and winter 2026, so save that drive for summer. Check BC’s road conditions page before you go, and expect logging trucks. There’s no marked bear site, so don’t go looking for it. In winter, see the bald eagles from the Eagle Run dyke in Brackendale instead.

FAQs About The Revenant Filming

The Final Cut on Where The Revenant Was Filmed

So where was The Revenant filmed? Mostly in Alberta’s Kananaskis Country and the Bow Valley, with the bear attack near Squamish, BC. Kootenai Falls in Montana and the Olivia River in Argentina filled in the rest.

The story is set on the American plains. The film is Canadian rock, river and forest. If you’ve ever driven Highway 40 or the Sea to Sky, you’ve driven past it.

Which Revenant location would you visit first?

For more, see how Lubezki shot it in our guide to the extreme long shot, read where Prey was filmed, another film shot in Alberta’s wilds, or browse all our film locations.