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(Cue trumpets and flashy indie-production company logo sequence.)

Fade in: Wham! A diminutive but determined hand strikes upward, knocking out the hulking bully.

With that punch, a little locally produced feature announced its arrival in theaters last month. "Imprint," a thriller filmed entirely in South Dakota, knocked Jodie Foster's "The Brave One" out of the top spot at the box office in Rapid City, S.D., when it premiered there in September.

That might not be the kind of blow that reverberates throughout the country, but it was a great coming out party, producers said.

"We were beating Jodie Foster opening weekend, which felt pretty good," producer Carolyn Linn said. "What we dream of - and we don't need to have this to be a success - we would love to have a national theatrical release. People are telling us 'Imprint' is refreshing, different, a breath of fresh air. It's gratifying to hear that. People don't always want 'Spiderman 4.'"

The indie, featuring an almost entirely American Indian cast, was shot in February 2006 on the Pine Ridge Reservation and a neighboring ranch. It will open in Bismarck, at the Carmike 8, on Friday.

"Imprint" tells the story of a prominent Indian attorney who prosecutes a Lakota boy in a controversial murder case. After the trial ends she leaves her home in Denver to go back to Pine Ridge to be with her dying father. A series of strange visions, ghostly voices and bizzare occurrences lead Shayla Stonefeather to reexamine her beliefs.

"It's kind of a thinking-man's thriller," director-writer Michael Linn said. "She's falling away from what she believes, then coming back to them. There's separation from family and the place she grew up. It has a lot of universal themes, and some culturally specific things."

Michael Linn - Carolyn's son - originally envisioned the story taking place on a rural South Dakota farm with a white family. But conversations with producer Chris Eyre, who made the critically and commercially successful films "Smoke Signals" and "Edge of America," steered the script in a new direction. The new characters for "Imprint" solidified their place on the page after the Native Voice Film Festival in Rapid City a few years ago.

"I kept hearing from actors that there weren't any contemporary roles available for Native Americans," Linn said. "It was all 'leather and feather' roles. They weren't complaining about it, but they wanted roles where they could be an action star or a comedian or something else. When I heard that, it put me over the top."

The director said the switch to Pine Ridge let him weave some Indian spirituality into the film, something that greatly enhanced the final product. Linn also, for the first time, used professional actors through the Screen Actors Guild.

"In my mind it turned out better than I could possibly have envisioned it," Michael Linn said. "There's something that happens in the creation of a film where it just gets out of your hands and the story takes a different path than you expected it to take. It does feel very outside of me still. I'm just thrilled watching it, and seeing the response. We've got such positive response to this film."

"Imprint" has opened in South Dakota and Nebraska already, and opens in Grand Forks and Bismarck this week. The Linn family - Michael's twin brother Marc edited the film and their brother Eric created the special effects - hope regional play is just a first step for "Imprint."

The movie has been given a week of play in Bismarck, and two if it performs well. But dollars and cents don't mean everything to the Linns, which certainly flags them as indie filmmakers.

"Success for me isn't financial," Michael Linn said. "I gauge success by how I feel about the final product. You cannot make a film that pleases everybody, and I understand that. As an artist, you have to make a film that you're proud of. It's hard. It took me a long time to let go of it, to say 'It's ready.' But it was ready. It was good."

Judge for yourself this week at the Carmike.

For more on the movie, check out www.imprintmovie.com.

(Reach reporter Tony Spilde at 250-8260 or tony.spilde@bismarcktribune.com.)