The Last Winter

This Canadian film presents and old-fashioned war time romance. It is set during 1942 in Manitoba and traces the doomed affair between a young farmer's wife (Christianne Hirt) whose husband is fighting abroad and a dashing Australian pilot (Russell Crowe). The pilot has come to train in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan of Canada. When the pilot, Lachlan, is not training, he is surreptitiously wooing Lill, the farmer's wife. At the other end of town, Betsy (Wanda Cannon) who supports her two kids by bootlegging, charges for her services. She gets involved with Zeek (Scott Kraft), an American flight instructor.

Frank Robinson abuses his wife verbally and batters her physically, with frightening consequences not only for her, but also for their sons, Billy and Freddy.

HEART LAND takes viewers from a raging white-water kayaking ride and the thundering heat of a chuckwagon race, to swooping over a field of magnificent sunflowers and the magic of a solar eclipse. There are landscapes of unparalleled beauty, the exquisite grace of Evelyn Hart and Andre Lewis dancing Norbert Vesak's award winning pas-de-deux, "Belong", a hilarious animated sequence by Richard Condie, and touching images, past and present, of the people who have dared to carve out a new life against a vast, and sometimes unforgiving landscape.