Charles Martin Smith’s The Snow Walker will close this year’s VIFF at the Oct. 10 gala. The film, based on a short story by beloved Canadian author Farley Mowat, tells the tale of a Canuck pilot lost in the barrens and the Inuit passenger whose native skills save them both.

The film’s striking visuals, attributed to directors of photography David Connell, Paul Sarossy and Jon Joffin, can be credited to Smith’s decision to shoot the $10.3-million feature on location in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, Churchill, MB and Merritt, BC.

Known for memorable supporting acting performances in American Graffiti and The Untouchables, Smith also starred in the 1983 sleeper Never Cry Wolf, another Mowat story. It was the experience of having filmed the latter in the Canadian Arctic that cemented Smith’s determination to helm The Snow Walker. (His other directing credits include the hugely successful Air Bud and the pilot for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series).

‘The flatness of the land in the barrens above the tree line is a vital part of the story,’ Smith explains. ‘I wanted the audience to see to the horizon so that they could share the pilot’s mistaken belief that he could walk out of the area.’

Smith’s performance in Never Cry Wolf as a Canadian government bureaucrat sent to study wolves as unwelcome predators only to fall in love with them created a long-lasting bond between him and Mowat. As a result, Smith says, ‘Farley invited me to look over his books and adapt whichever ones I would like to film. However, adapting novels to film often doesn’t work. There’s so much you have to cut out. In contrast, the short story Walk Well, My Brother translated well to the film, because the plot line was so simple and yet so powerful.’

Thematically, The Snow Walker, scripted by Smith, does have a simple story, set in the 1950s. Bush pilot Charlie Halliday, played by B.C. actor Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan, 61*), is talked into taking the seriously ill Inuit woman Kanaalaq (newcomer Annabella Piugattuk, who was discovered at a teen dance in Igloolik) to a doctor in Yellowknife. On the way, Halliday’s plane crashes in the barrens. Being as macho as he is, he decides they should walk 200 miles for help, but they soon get into danger. Only through the help of Kanaalaq, who understands the land and its dangers, do the two make it out alive.

In their bid to make The Snow Walker as visually impressive as possible, Smith and Infinity Media producers Rob Merilees and William Vince found themselves facing the same hardships as the film’s characters.

‘In particular, the weather in Churchill was crazy,’ Merilees says. ‘One minute it was freezing, the next we were being eaten alive by mosquitoes. In fact, the only day that we had to stop shooting early was due to bugs. There were so many mosquitoes between the actors and the camera that we couldn’t get a clear shot.’

Meanwhile, marauding polar bears were a hazard on the Churchill set. There were so many of them that armed guards were posted to keep the bears from pawing the actors. ‘We managed to get a shot of Pepper with a family of polar bears in the background, but we weren’t able to use it in the film,’ Merilees says. ‘Hopefully we can fit it into the trailer.’

Weather and bears weren’t the only challenges that dogged The Snow Walker. Shooting in the barrens made obtaining gear a logistical nightmare. In general, everything was brought in by barge or ‘tundra buggy’ – large bus-like campers on monster-truck-sized tires – so as to avoid sinking into the waterlogged tundra.

‘Anything we forgot had to be brought in by helicopter,’ Merilees says. ‘Barry Pepper didn’t have a trailer – nor did anyone – because we would have had to have brought it in by barge.’

All told, the trials of filming The Snow Walker on location were so akin to the story itself that the shoot’s running mantra became ‘Shoot the movie, live the movie.’

‘Fortunately, the actors rose to the occasion,’ says Smith. ‘In particular, Barry Pepper threw himself into his role without reservation. If I asked him to stand in a creek up to his knees, he’d jump in head first.’

Funding for The Snow Walker was handled by Vancouver-based production house Infinity Media. In business for four years, ‘our mandate is to produce films for Canada and Germany,’ Merilees says. Infinity also produced Air Bud, which grossed a reported $75 million. Lions Gate Films is The Snow Walker’s Canadian distributor, while First Look Media owns international rights. In addition to these financial contributors, Telefilm Canada, B.C. Film and The Harold Greenberg Fund kicked in.

A Vancouver resident since the early 1980s, the u.s.-born Smith says he loves shooting in Canada and working with B.C. crews, ‘who regard filmmaking as a labor of love, rather than another product churned out by the Hollywood machine.’ This is why the director adds that he’s ‘absolutely delighted’ to see The Snow Walker closing this year’s VIFF.

Smith is currently working on a new script about the 1950s Scottish independence movement. ‘Some of the scenes take place outside Westminster Abbey, which is why I expect we’ll have to shoot on location,’ Smith says. ‘Still, if we can fake up some of the interiors in Vancouver, we will.’

-www.infinitymediainc.com

-www.lionsgatefilms.com