Songcatcher

The time is 1907. Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer), a woman ahead of her time, has just been passed over yet again for a university promotion, despite her academic achievements. Frustrated and determined to get the recognition she deserves, she heads to Appalachia, dragging an impossibly bulky, primitive recording device far into the hill country, with a plan to record music never heard before. There she joins her sister Elna (Jane Adams), who runs a local schoolhouse - and quickly butts her head against the fiercely insular and protective mountain ways. Here, the story takes a left turn into the wild-hearted culture of the Appalachian mountains, as Lily worms and wheedles her way into the world where American roots music was born, a place of hardscrabble farmers, daring, illegal bootleggers and palpable magic.