'Hadwin's Judgement' is a spellbinding and visually stunning account of environmentalism, obsession and myth set in Canada's Pacific Northwest.
The film chronicles the tormented transformation of Grant Hadwin from expert logger to environmental terrorist, a man who dared to challenge the destruction of the world's last great temperate rainforest.
Hadwin's one-man crusade culminated in his now infamous destruction of one of North America's most sacred trees, a perverse and outrageous act of protest that was, in itself, a crime against nature.
Inspired by John Vaillant's award-winning book 'The Golden Spruce', the film introduces us to the complex character of Grant Hadwin, a logging engineer and survivalist who lived and worked happily for many years in BCʼs ancient forests. Unable to reconcile his love for the forest with the highly skilled part that he was playing in destroying it, he was driven to commit a strange and unprecedented crime, one that ran contrary to all he had come to hold sacred.
The film interweaves speculation, myth and reality to explore the motives behind Hadwin's tragic protest, and the consequences of his actions. It charts his descent into torment and self-destruction, a journey that ended with a mysterious discovery that made him not just a madman, but also a visionary.
