On the drought-blasted Manitoba prairie of the Great Depression, a Scandinavian immigrant loses everything, his farm to the bank, his wife to death, and responds by building a ship to carry her body home to Norway. Mad Ship is a haunting period drama from director David Mortin, starring Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Gil Bellows, Rachel Blanchard, and Martha Burns. It was a Canadian Screen Award nominee and won Best Picture at the New Hope Film Festival.

Why This Film Matters: Economic ruin, forced migration, and grief pushed to the edge of madness are themes that echo through every era of hardship. Mad Ship turns one man's impossible act into a meditation on loss and the lengths love will go. It's a striking, elemental story about holding on when everything is stripped away.