First Winter

This is quite a chilling short drama that follows a young Irish immigrant family as they struggle with their first winter in Canada. With her husband having to work elsewhere, it falls to a mother to keep her daughter and younger son from the bitterness of the climate. It's a constant cycle of chopping wood and breaking the ice to provide water and that, in the face of the constantly sub-zero temperatures, ultimately takes it's toll leaving the youngsters to fend for themselves. Can they survive the bleak conditions until their dad returns, though? It's quite a touching story of survival against the elements with two young actors delivering quite poignantly as the older (Sharon O'Neill) has to keep her increasingly dejected sibling (Eric Patrick Godfrey) from simply giving up. It illustrates well the pioneering spirit, sustained by a little religious faith, that prevailed amongst families that left poverty behind only to find it followed them across the stormy seas, though at least here they had no exploitative landlords - just wolves and trees and ice.

This 26 minute short drama is a production of the National Film Board of Canada, and depicts, in rather bare bones fashion, the struggle for survival of an Irish immigrant family in the early 19th century as they battle the elements during their first winter in Canada, in the Ottawa Valley.

The bare bones is understandable. It is, after all, only 26 minutes long. So, the film gives us a sense of some of the struggles, but not really a lot of the details. The story revolves around a mother and her two children, the father having left for the winter to work in a logging camp. They deal with cold, little food, wild animals and sickness as they await the coming of spring. They find both solace and strength in their religious faith and in their culture, whose language they can now use, since it had been banned in Ireland by the British.

A lot of this is narrated by Sharon O'Niell, who plays the teenage daughter. I'd have liked to have seen it a bit longer actually, so that it could have provided a little more detail; a little more story. As it is, it's a glimpse of a very different time when life was hard and survival wasn't a given. (5/10)

Oscar-nominated for best short film the year it was released, this touching film in English and Irish Gaelic tells the story of young girl and her brother's survival in the Canadian wilderness. It is the nineteenth-century era of pioneer immigration. Father is some distance away and Mother and two children try to survive the first winter in the wilds.

The film shows the loneliness of that first year and the tragedy that often accompanied dispossessed peoples on arrival in the New World. The three characters in this ensemble piece rely on memories of their culture, stories and songs to cope with their new and strange environment. Some aspects of the film stretch one's belief, particularly the children's lone survival, but the acting is fine and the children play their roles endearingly and convincingly.

It is a rare but pleasant event to see Irish Gaelic in a Canadian film. The native language of Irish and Scottish Gaels is so often ignored in films concerning these cultures.