In the winter forest, a bear frightens a small boy whose father then sets out with his dog to track the huge animal. The chase lasts into the darkness, where even this experienced hunter retreats in panic, for as Sucksdorff characteristically says he realises “that senses stronger than his are masters of the night”. Full of the beauty and the terror of the struggle to live, it also displays the distinctive Scandinavian approach to nature in which, “wood, wind and water are still alive”.