The Snow Walker

Plot synopsis:
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.
Charlie estimates they are about 100 miles from the closest town. Believing their chances of survival are slim if they both wait with the aircraft, Charlie leaves Kanaalaq behind to look for help on his own. He soon learns, however, that he is unprepared for the challenges presented by this harsh and unforgiving land. One morning he awakens surrounded by a storm of mosquitoes, which force him to flee shoeless across the jagged rocks before collapsing. Kanaalaq appears above him and begins treating his wounds and bites with mud and grass. She feeds him and mends his clothes. Gradually, Charlie regains his strength and is healed through Kanaalaq's patient care. Charlie comes to appreciate this young woman's gifts, and together they learn to communicate with each other.
After hearing the sound of a distant aircraft, Charlie realizes they never should have abandoned the crash site. He decides they should return to their aircraft, which he believes has surely been discovered by now. They set out together, but this time he is much better equipped with the watertight boots that Kanaalaq made for him. Along the way, the ailing young Inuit woman teaches the hot-tempered pilot the way to live in the tundra, and the two form a bond of respect and friendship. When they discover the ruins of another aircraft crash, Kanaalaq shows Charlie how to prepare a corpse for the afterlife in a stone burial cairn with the person's tools placed inside. She tells him that when a person is called to the afterlife, where there is much wildlife for hunting, they need the appropriate tools.
When Charlie and Kanaalaq arrive back at the crash site, they discover no sign of rescuers, and Charlie becomes deeply depressed, convinced they will not survive the oncoming winter. Kanaalaq, however, understands how to survive in this harsh land, and she prepares a caribou hunt. She places inuksuit — multiple stone structures used by the Inuit to guide caribou into areas where hunters can easily harvest them. She is able to elicit Charlie's help, and together they kill three caribou, which will provide sufficient food and pelts for the winter.
One night, Kanaalaq reveals how her father died in a snowstorm, and how her mother wandered off to die so that her children would have enough food to live. After Kanaalaq uses the pelts to create suitable winter clothing for Charlie, Charlie and Kanaalaq set out together across the tundra hoping to reach an Inuit camp or village to the north. In the coming days, Kanaalaq's condition worsens, and Charlie is forced to carry her on a sleigh he built using the valuable walrus tusks. One morning, Charlie discovers that Kanaalaq too has wandered off so that he might live. He follows her tracks in the snow, which lead to a white owl. He builds a stone burial cairn for Kanaalaq, placing her hunting and fishing tools, and the valuable walrus tusks inside for the afterlife.
In a snowstorm, Charlie approaches a small Inuit village, where he is welcomed.

Tags: realism, storytelling, flashback

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