The Weight of Water is a 2000 psychological thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, and starring Catherine McCormack, Sean Penn, Elizabeth Hurley, Josh Lucas, Vinessa Shaw, Katrin Cartlidge, Ciarán Hinds, and Sarah Polley. Based on Anita Shreve's 1997 novel of the same name, it follows a newspaper photographer who, while researching the murders of two Norwegian immigrants that occurred in the Isles of Shoals in 1873, finds her own life paralleling that of a witness to the crime. The film is told in a nonlinear narrative fashion, contrasting the contemporary events with the semi-fictionalized historical events.