The Snow Walker | |
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Theatrical release poster
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Directed by | Charles Martin Smith |
Produced by |
William Vince Robert Merilees |
Written by | Charles Martin Smith |
Based on | "Walk Well, My Brother" by Farley Mowat |
Starring |
Barry Pepper Annabella Piugattuk James Cromwell Kiersten Warren Robin Dunne Jon Gries |
Music by |
Mychael Danna Paul Intson |
Cinematography |
David Connell Paul Sarossy Jon Joffin |
Edited by | Alison Grace |
Production
company |
Snow Walker/Walk Well Productions
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Distributed by | Infinity Media Lions Gate Films |
Release date
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Running time
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103 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
Box office | $201,149 |
The Snow Walker is a 2003 Canadian survival drama film written and directed by Charles Martin Smith and starring Barry Pepper. Based on the short story Walk Well, My Brother by Farley Mowat, the film is about a Canadian bush pilot whose life is changed through an encounter with a young Inuit woman and their challenge to survive the harsh conditions of the Northwest Territories following an aircraft crash.The film won six Leo Awards, including Best Lead Performance by a Male (Barry Pepper), and was nominated for nine Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actor (Barry Pepper), Best Performance by an Actress (Annabella Piugattuk), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Charles Martin Smith).
In the summer of 1953, Canadian bush pilot Charlie Halliday (Barry Pepper), a brash, former Second World War bomber pilot based in Yellowknife, is flying a routine job in the Queen Maud Gulf on the Arctic Ocean when he encounters a small band of Inuit people who plead for his help. They are traveling with a sick young woman, Kanaalaq (Annabella Piugattuk), and they ask Charlie to fly her to a hospital. Charlie suspects she has tuberculosis. At first he refuses, but when they offer him two valuable walrus tusks for his help, he reluctantly agrees to take her to Yellowknife.
During the flight, his Noorduyn Norseman aircraft develops engine trouble, and they crash land near the shore of a glacial lake. Charlie and Kanaalaq are unharmed, but the aircraft is disabled. They are in the middle of a vast tundra in the Northwest Territories, the radio is broken, and they have a meagre amount of supplies. To make matters worse, he is hundreds of miles from the route he submitted in his original flight plan, so any rescue operation would not know where to look. Charlie is overwhelmed with a sense of doom, and he sees his Inuit companion as an unwelcome burden.