The film North Country, based on a true story, is inspired by the book "Class Action: The Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law," by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler.
In the film, Josey Aimes (Charlize Theron) is a single mother with two children who returns to her hometown in Northern Minnesota to find work after her marriage has failed. Since iron mines are the predominant source of employment in the region at the time, Aimes seeks work in the iron mines. What she finds is a male-dominated world where the last thing the miners want is a woman competing for scarce jobs. The men have no interest in working with women who, according to long-held chauvinistic attitudes, have no business blasting rock or driving trucks, those are viewed as jobs for men only.
The few women who ignore the negativity from the male iron workers and manage to get jobes in the mines are faced all sorts of sexual harassment. The women are subjected to pornographic taunts and brutality from a work-force threatened by their very presence. Aimes refuses to take any further harassment and is ready to rally up the women of the iron mines in action against such actions.
North Country is the story of how one woman pioneered and won the first sexual harassment class action suit in the United States, a legal milestone that immeasurably improved working conditions for American women.
Warner Bros. Pictures presents, in association with Participant Productions, a Nick Wechsler Production of a Niki Caro Film: Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand star in North Country, also starring Sean Bean, Richard Jenkins, Jeremy Renner, Michelle Monaghan, with Woody Harrelson and Sissy Spacek. North Country is directed by Niki Caro and produced by Nick Wechsler, from a screenplay by Michael Seitzman, inspired by the book titled “Class Action: The Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law,” by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler. Helen Bartlett, Nana Greenwald, Doug Claybourne and Jeff Skoll are executive producers. Chris Menges is the director of photography; Richard Hoover, the production designer; and David Coulson, film editor. Music by Gustavo Santaolalla. North Country will is distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.
