The ten-year-old Tri-State Crematory scandal in north Georgia inspires a movie.  The independent film "Sahkanaga" makes its Chattanooga premiere this Friday. 

Filmmaker John Henry Summerour grew up in Chickamauga and shot the film on-site in Walker County.  "Sakhanaga," which means "great blue hills of God" in Cherokee, has been a hit on the film festival circuit, winning the audience award for best narrative feature at the 2011 Atlanta Film Festival. 

Summerour makes clear his film is fiction based on true-life events.  Crematory operator Ray Brent Marsh pled guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in prison for dumping bodies in the woods rather than cremating them in his family's Walker County crematory.