Whitewash

Bruce, a snowplow driver in a remote Quebec town, strikes a pedestrian while driving drunk in a raging snowstorm and kills him. Panicking, he hides the body in a snowbank and drives deeper into the woods, where exhaustion knocks him out. He awakes to realize his snowplow is stuck, leaving him stranded in the freezing cold.

With no help in sight, he practices what he will tell the police, staging imagined conversations in which he confronts his guilt. He grows increasingly emotional as he is told that the victim had children. The scene emphasizes his solitude and mounting anxiety.

In a flashback, Paul, who is Bruce's houseguest, leaves a store and tries to commit suicide by inhaling exhaust and Paul’s car. Bruce starts a casual conversation, is drawn to Paul, and ends up commandeering Paul's vehicle for rides, forming a fragile friendship. Paul notices Bruce's collection of ocular prostheses and proposes online sales, but Bruce declines, unable to sell his wife's crafts.

The friendship grows tense when Paul asks Bruce for a loan, testing Bruce's dwindling resources. Bruce remains firm that he cannot help, reflecting his own financial hardships. The exchange foreshadows how fragile Bruce's mercy will become when guilt tightens its grip.

Bruce runs out of gas and abandons the snowplow, trudging toward civilization through the cold. He finds a nearby restaurant and hopes to get help, but his suspicions and fear remain high. Inside, a newspaper reveals that he and Paul have been reported missing, heightening his sense of isolation.

After the restaurant, Bruce buys essential supplies and prepares to endure the winter by returning to his snowplow. He resumes the grind of living off the land, gathering what he can to survive. The cold tightens its grip around him as he makes his way back into the woods.

Bruce locates a large house near a frozen lake and breaks into the shed to steal supplies he needs. He hides when the owners return, narrowly avoiding confrontation. The cold acts as a silent judgment on his desperation.

The following morning, Simone, the owner's daughter, spots Bruce and is frightened by his presence. He apologizes to Eric, the father, before retreating into the woods to avoid pursuit. The encounter heightens Bruce's sense that he cannot stay in either world.

Eric and a friend search the woods for the missing man, and Bruce is forced to hide, injuring his ankle in the process. He remains on Eric's land, unable to hobble back to civilization. The injury intensifies his vulnerability and isolation.

Through flashbacks, Bruce remembers catching Paul stealing and pursuing him, leading to the fatal collision with the snowplow. He questions whether the crash was a second suicide attempt or an accident. The memory feeds his growing paranoia and blame toward the snowplow itself.

In a furious act, Bruce dumps gasoline on the snowplow and sets it on fire to destroy the instrument of his guilt. He digs up Paul’s body and disposes of it in a frozen lake, but is caught in the act as witnesses flee in panic. The act marks a point of no return and accelerates his paranoia.

Back at his home, Bruce realizes that two men are looking for him—whether police or accomplices of Eric. He tries to hide in the snowplow by banging his boot to attract attention, but the men pass by without noticing. He struggles to repair the snowplow, hampered by his limited mechanical skill and mounting desperation.

Bruce's physical ordeal grows as he starves, even chewing on tree bark to stay alive. The winter ebbs and returns, underscoring his bleak fate. The film closes on his voiceover, reflecting the grim maxim that every guilty person is their own hangman, while insisting that each new day could be better, before the scene ends with the freezing cold.