COLT, THE

A gift of hope arrives on a very special dawn for a desperate Civil War cavalry struggling to survive in the midst of battle…

It’s 1864 and the First Michigan Cavalry is stranded in a Virginia forest, choking with smouldering fires and smoke and chilled by the distant cries of falling men. Among those stranded in this hell: the weary Sergeant Longacre (Steve Bacic, Out of Order); Covington (Darcy Belsher, Legalise), an illustrator enlisted to capture the Civil War in unerring detail; and trooper Jim Rabb (Ryan Merriman, Taken) who counts his brother among the casualties, yet still rides his beloved mare Jen with a true soldier’s indomitable will to survive. Then one morning Jim discovers that Jen has given birth and by her side is a newborn colt, shaking and afraid, born to chaos, and clinging to his mother for life. Longacre orders Jim to shoot the foal, lest it prove a hindrance, but Jim—seeing the colt as a consolation and a reminder of the beauty of life—refuses.

An omen of good fortune, Jen and her nursing foal join the team of men marching toward unknown horizons. However, the camp is suddenly taken by Confederates, Jen and the colt are stolen, and Jim spurs a horse in a long, winding chase and shoots the fleeing soldier to retrieve the mother and baby. The incident has left him in darkness, afraid, lost, and separated from his bivouacked brigade, with a dying enemy on his hands. But honouring the Union Reb’s last wish sparks in Jim a journey of remarkable honour and duty toward enlightenment and untold danger—one that will the test the spirit and courage of a country at war and pay heartrending tribute to those of God’s creatures who are blessedly innocent to the careless ways of man.