Writer/Director Charles Martin Smith (Never Cry Wolf)
Charlie Halliday/pilot played by Barry Pepper(Saving Private Ryan)
Kanaalaq/Inuit Girl by Anabella Plugattuk (She's the real deal, an Inuit from Igloolik, Nunavut)
Former WWII pilot Charlie Halliday is flying bush planes in the NW Territories. He is brash, confident and doesn't respect the native Inuit, considering them to be drunken savages. He also has demons stemming from his experiences in the war.
On a routine flight to the Hudsons Bay he lands to offload some barrels of gasoline in the tundra. Here he unexpectedly meets a family of Inuit who have a girl sick with TB (Kanaalaq). They bribe the pilot to carry her to the hospital in Yellowknife by offering him a small fortune in walrus tusk scrimshaw.
Bad weather and a plane crash leave them stranded well off his flight plan in the middle of the muskeg. Within an hour of the crash Kanaalaq has broken out her line and caught a fish, which she offers to share with Charlie, but he refuses to eat it raw. After a few days he realizes they will not be rescued and decides to take the rifle and try to walk 200 miles to the town of Baker Lake. He tells Kanaalaq he will send help in "a few days" but really he knows he is leaving her to die.
A week into his hike the tundra has beaten him. He has lost his shoes, his ammunition clip, has no food or prospects of obtaining any when a swarm of mosquitos drive him to madness and he runs wildly across the barrenlands until he collapses.
He is found by Kanaalaq who has recovered enough to follow his trail and she nurses him back to health. She teaches him how to survive in the bleak wilderness and he begins to learn respect for the Inuit culture and this remarkable woman. Their journey back to find help becomes his rebirth as a complete, whole man.
This movie isn't in release in the US or at least I have not seen anything about it down here. It was filmed in Canada and has already been shown there. You either have to buy the DVD on the net, possibly rent it or wait, hoping we southerners will get lucky.
http://www.snowwalkerthemovie.com/#
