Wiebo’s War yields high drama

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      A documentary by David York. Unrated. Opens Friday, October 21, at the Vancity Theatre

      A quarter-century ago, Wiebo Ludwig uprooted his Ontario clan and moved to a chunk of Alberta’s Peace River country he called Trickle Creek. Unfortunately for his back-to-the-land Christian sect, the petroleum industry was eyeing the same land, and the Ludwigs were shocked to find that, technically speaking, they only owned the top six inches of valuable farmland. Next thing you know, sour-gas wells were being dug adjacent to their property, with dire consequences to their health and, some might say, sanity.

      In 2001, Wiebo was convicted for criminal mischief relating to the cementing of one well and some explosions on another site, but he was never charged in the tale’s most troubling incident: the 1999 death of a local girl aboard a truck full of drunken teenagers who invaded Trickle Creek in the middle of the night. After a short stint in jail, the charismatic Ludwig—now almost 70—has remained cannily defiant of the authorities and the corporations that keep pressing in on him.

      With support from the National Film Board of Canada, Toronto-based filmmaker David York spent two years off and on with the extended clan, and the uneasy fit between big-city agnostics and rural fundamentalists—although both sides make clear that Ludwig isn’t a fire-and-brimstone ideologue—yields high drama as events unfold before the camera in Wiebo’s War. Last year Wiebo was arrested again, this time in connection with gas-pump explosions in nearby B.C., and he was soon released. This quietly provocative film leaves it to the viewer to interpret deeper meanings. By the end, the subject isn’t just one man and his inner and outer struggles but also the dubious relationships between media, the justice system, and the corporations that really call the shots.


      Watch the trailer for Wiebo's War.

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