With a unique blend of dramatic action and behind-the-scenes documentary footage, filmmaker John Walker shares the multi-layered story of British explorer Sir John Franklin and his crew of 128 men, who perished in the Arctic ice during an ill-fated attempt to discover the Northwest Passage, and John Rae, the Scottish doctor who in 1851, discovered their dismal fate. Rae's dark report, which described the crew’s madness and cannibalism, did not sit well with Sir John's widow, Lady Franklin, nor with many others in British society, including Charles Dickens. They waged a bitter public campaign to discredit Rae's version of events and mark an entire nation of northern Inuit with the label of murderous cannibals. A stunning face-to-face meeting between the great-great grandson of Charles Dickens and Tagak Curley, an honoured Inuit statesman who challenges the fraudulent history, vaults the story from the past into the present and we are witness to history in the making.
Direction
Walker weaves documentary, drama, and confrontation with surgical precision.
Production
Arctic locations that swallow the reenactments whole.
Writing
Rae's cannibalism report read like a Gothic horror novel.
Director
John Walker
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Franklin expedition became a Victorian obsession; over 30 search missions were launched, more men dying looking for the dead than originally perished.
The wreck of HMS Erebus was finally found in 2014, six years after this film—vindicating Inuit oral history Charles Dickens publicly mocked.
US
CA
