Cross Creek
In 1928, frustrated newspaper reporter Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Oscar winner Mary Steenburgen) leaves her husband and career and moves to an isolated orange grove in the Florida bayou to concentrate on writing fiction.  But here is this strange and untamed land, Marjorie will find her life changed forever by a devoted servant (Alfre Woodard) who becomes her friend, a local businessman (Peter Coyote) who becomes her lover and the backwoods father (Rip Torn) and his young daughter (Dana Hill) who become her greatest inspiration.  Cross Creek is based on the best-selling memoirs of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Yearling.  Directed by the legendary Martin Ritt (Sounder, Norma Rae), the film became the sensation of the 1983 Cannes Film Festival and remains one of the most powerful portraits ever of a writer's search for fulfillment as well as the remarkable story of one woman's bold struggle for independence.