Snow Walker (2003)

I don't know quite what I was expecting of this movie, but certainly not the absorbing and moving experience that it was.  Directed by Charles Martin Smith whom I have always liked as an actor, it tells of a bush pilot, Barry Pepper, who is cajoled (or actually bribed) to take an ill Inuit lass as a passenger.  The plane crashes in the arctic tundra and it soon becomes apparent that he is incapable of surviving on his own.  Having left her behind as he went off to "get help", he is effectively rescued by her and it is her native skills that ultimately provide him with the chance to live.  I must confess that Barry Pepper has never struck me as an actor who could carry a film on his own, but he does a reasonable job; the girl, an actual native in her first role, gives him the support he needs (on all levels), despite the fact that they have little language in common.  The photography is quite spectacular as one would hope.