When the North Wind Blows

There is a distant place in north Alaska, far from where the caribou roam. Here a man is judged by his strength, not by how many books he has read. A man like Avacum (Brandon), who accidentally shoots the son of his best friend, Boris the storekeeper. Fleeing to the wilds, Avacum makes a new friend - the tigress who has been terrorising the village. They protect each other, she has a pair of cubs, he adopts them when mother is gunned down by anti-conservationists. Avacum survives a year of hardship, finally turning his back on so-called civilisation. The question remains: who got the tigress pregnant? In other words, an overbearingly solemn slice of life-in-the-raw, whose often beautiful photography is let down by the Woody Allen-ish character of the peasantry involved. Some interest is kept going by the spectacle of large tigers on the attack and at play. It's a long winter, though.