On Saturday night at the Twin Cities Film Fest, the audience is sure to be cheering from the opening shot of Sold Out. It's an aerial shot of Minneapolis, establishing the film's location in a snowbound Land of 10,000 Lakes.

Sold Out, a new film directed by Tim Dahlseid and written by Susan Brightbill, "was filmed in Minnesota during the second coldest winter in history." (That would be 2018-19.) That didn't stop stars Kelsey McMahon (a.k.a. Mousie) and Sam Bardwell from dancing on a truck in the middle of a frozen lake in one of the film's several sweeping aerial shots.

Bardwell is just one of multiple Twin Cities stage vets in the cast, which also includes Christine Weber, Ernest Briggs, and — as McMahon's father — Patrick Thomas O'Brien, who earned an immortal place in pop culture as Mr. Dewey on Saved By the Bell. The cast also features local musicians like Lonesome Dan Kase and Craig Clark, who join Bardwell in a jam session shot in the Comedy Corner Underground.

At the film's outset, Bardwell's character John is a depressed dad (Bardwell's real-life daughter Naomi charmingly portrays John's daughter Millie) stuck in a construction job he hates. What he loves is music, but he's only found time to write and record a three-song demo. That's enough to convince Kat (McMahon), an "independent music scout" who becomes a Midwestern manic pixie dream girl for John: she convinces him to quit his job, leave his miserable marriage, and jump in her truck for a journey to parts unknown.

That turns out to be not L.A., but L.C. (La Crosse), where John retrieves his favorite guitar and sets to work summoning the muse. Surprise, she's right in front of him — and she turns out to have talent of her own, as well as some demons to exorcise. It all leads up to a big gig at the local watering hole where the Android-averse Kat gets her phone messages, and John hopes she'll show up to tag in for the babysitter (Olivia Gubel) he has singing backup.

It's probably best not to take Sold Out as a tutorial on the music business (if only it were true that bands' publicists walked up and down outside a sold-out venue asking, "Anyone else industry?"), but there's a lot of good music in the movie, which features songs by artists including David Huckfelt, Kris Delmhorst, and Jeffrey Foucault. Delmhorst and Foucault wrote the songs Bardwell's heard singing in the movie, including Delmhorst's moving climactic track "Don't Wake Me Up."

While Saturday's screening will likely sell out, a little songbird tells me Sold Out may soon be available for wider viewing. At the film's website, you can sign up for a mailing list if you're interested in updates. In the meantime, the Twin Cities Film Fest has many more films you can catch online and in person. Update 10/25: Sold Out is now available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.