By Chad Klassen

New documentary on Ryan Shtuka bringing new hope to the case

Sep 10, 2018 | 5:15 PM

KAMLOOPS — Seven months later and there’s still no sign of Ryan Shtuka, the 19 year old who went missing from Sun Peaks in the early morning hours of Feb. 19. 

But there is some renewed hope with a documentary on Shtuka’s disappearance that is now moving ahead. 

“We’re really excited about it,” said Ryan’s mom Heather Shtuka, who’s been to Sun Peaks many times from their hometown in Beaumont, Alberta. “I think it’ll bring awareness to Ryan as a missing person but also to missing people as a whole. What progress we’ve made, what roadblocks that we faced in the beginning of the search, and what can be done in the future.”

The documentary, entitled Peaks and Valleys: The Search for Ryan Shtuka, is one of 30 films to win a $50,000 prize by Telus to fund the project. 

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“It goes a long way to the travel we want to do [for the project],” said one of the Kamloops filmmakers Russell Walton, who along with Jared Featherstone, are working to put the film together. “Acquiring some additional equipment that’s really going to allow us to make a product that can really tell the story that we want to tell and is high enough quality to be broadcast.”

The filmmakers were going to move the project forward regardless of funding, knowing how deeply Ryan’s story has touched the community. Now they can get to work on a labour of love, both for them, the Shtuka family, and the community at large. 

“We’ve already been doing quite a lot of research. It’s definitely research and planning, a couple months that we need to be doing, and then we go into shooting for a few months and a few months of post-production, so it’s going to be pretty action-packed over the next nine months, but we are very excited and we think it’s a story worth telling,” noted Walton, who added the documentary must be completed by May 30, 2019. 

Meantime, the Shtuka family is returning to Sun Peaks on Thursday. It’s where Heather and Scott Shtuka will celebrate their wedding anniversary on Sunday while continuing to search for their son.