Margaret's Museum

Margaret's Museum (118 min., Canada, 1995)

Glace Bay is a small mining town on Cape Breton Island. Its inhabitants, descended from Scottish, Irish and French immigrants, have always lived by fishing, farming and mining the coal seams that stretch away under the surrounding seas.

The period is the late 1940s. Since her father and older brother were lost in a mining accident, Margaret has devoted her life to taking care of her grandfather - who suffers from "black lung", the coalminers' disease - and trying to stop her younger brother from going down the mine. Then Neill enters her world, bringing romance and the hope of escape from the poverty and hardship she has endured till now without complaint.

This moving film, a chronicle of Margaret's struggle for a better life, is set against the overwhelming difficulties faced by a community whose existence is completely dependent on a coal mine.

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