North Country [DVD] [2005]

Drama starring Academy Award winner Charlize Theron. When Josey Aimes (Theron) returns to her hometown in Northern Minnesota after a failed marriage, she needs a good job. A single mother with two children to support, she turns to the predominant source of employment in the region - the iron mines. The mines provide a livelihood that has sustained a community for generations. The work is hard but the pay is good and friendships that form on the job extend into everyday life, bonding families and neighbourhoods with a common thread. Encouraged by her old friend Glory (Frances McDormand), one of the few female miners in town, Josey joins the ranks of those laboring to blast ore from rock in the gaping quarries. She is prepared for the back-breaking and often dangerous work, but coping with the harassment she and the other female miners encounter from their male co-workers proves far more challenging.