This gripping adventure was filmed by director Kaufman (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) on location on Baffin Island, in the Arctic Archipelago of Canada’s Nunavut (formerly Northwest Territory), using a cast of native Inuit. Based on a true story and the subsequent novel by James Houston, the film relates the encounter in 1896 of an isolated group of Eskimos with three whalers who have been marooned on the ice after their ship is destroyed. Into the natural rhythms of the Eskimo life cycle—depicted through religious rituals, hunting practices, and recreational pursuits—the foreigners introduce gambling, booze, theft, and their special variations of sex. The natural harmonies of a mutually cooperative society guided by the laws of nature eventually come into full conflict with the rugged individualism of the West.