Starring: Connie Nielsen (Gladiator), Aidan Quinn (Legends Of The Fall), John Bell 

Producers: Tina Pehme & Kim Roberts (Sepia Films), James Flynn (Octagon Films)

Associate Producer: John Bolton

Writers: Vic Sarin, Dennis Foon, Catherine Spear
Director: Vic Sarin
Canadian Distribution & Foreign Sales: Seville Pictures

Genre: Magical Family Drama

 

Logline: A lonely orphan's life is transformed by an extraordinary woman who teaches him to conquer grief and discover the magic in nature and himself.

 

Synopsis: Since the death of his beloved grandmother, Thomas, a frail, shy eight-year-old boy, has been living in a desolate orphanage.  Shunned by the other children, teased because of his painful stutter, he's sad, friendless and alone.  Then a flamboyant bundle of energy enters his world: Mairi McDonald, a bright splash of colour in a gray, drab world,  and whose bright table cloths, aprons and handkerchiefs, reflect her love of life, and her constant desire to find beauty in it.  Yearning for a child, she comes to the cold institution and immediately sees something special in the boy, and he in her, for Mairi's smile and spirit light up the darkest room – and Thomas's heart. In a flash, Thomas is on a boat, sailing to Mairi's home on the remote, wind swept island of Corrie.  Thomas is overwhelmed by the crashing ocean, the seabirds, lobsters, and rough island people, but above all, he fears Mairi's husband, Alec. A man of few words and fewer friends, he agreed to an adoption only to please Mairi, whom he adores. But the intrusion of this feeble lad into their intimate home is hard for him to take.  He can't understand why Mairi would have chosen a boy so timid and physically weak, but Mairi is determined to give Thomas the love he so badly needs.  Though Thomas can sense the building tension between Mairi and Alec over his presence, Mairi sweeps the boy up into the magic all around them.  Against the rugged Corrie landscape, with its mists, moors, and extraordinary rainbows, Mairi opens Thomas's eyes to the beauty in the world and helps him release his pain in a gentle, mystical way.  She shares with Thomas the secrets of the seals and introduces him to to a pair of delightful island children, Shamus and Nancy, who become his excellent friends.  Together they happen upon an incredible sea cave guarded by a colony of bats, a bizarre Tinkerwoman and a mysterious petrified giant in the form of a standing stone.  Under Mairi's nurturing care, Thomas blossoms, despite the long shadow Alec casts on his life.  Without the taciturn man's signature, the adoption will fall through.  This nagging fear becomes a distinct possibility when the unthinkable happens.  Mairi becomes ill and dies.  Mairi's death devastates both Thomas and Alec. But Mairi has left Thomas with a little bit of her magic - her smile pressed into a handkerchief.  Armed with what she's passed on to him, Thomas struggles to reach Alec through the thick cloud of grief that consumes him.  But when Alec burns nearly everything that once belonged to Mairi in a blazing bonfire, Thomas stops trying.  More isolated and bereft than ever, he calls on the primordial magic of the seals.  In his heroic attempt to reunite a baby seal with its mother, he almost drowns, and Alec finally recognizes that the same spirit he loved in Mairi lives on in this little boy.   And Thomas, thanks to Mairi's lingering magic, finally finds a father.  A Shine of Rainbows is a story about conquering grief and finding love, discovering the magic in nature and the everyday world and realizing that rainbows are all around you – and within you too.