True North (film)
| True North | |
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| Directed by | Steve Hudson |
| Produced by | David Collins Eddie Dick Sonja Ewers |
| Written by | Steve Hudson |
| Starring |
Martin Compston Peter Mullan Gary Lewis Steven Robertson Angel Li |
| Music by | Edmund Butt |
| Cinematography | Peter Robertson |
| Edited by | Andrea Mertens |
| Distributed by | Ariel Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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96 minutes |
| Country |
United Kingdom Germany Ireland |
| Language | English |
True North is a 2006 Scottish drama film directed by Steve Hudson and starring Martin Compston, Peter Mullan, Gary Lewis and Steven Robertson as sailors aboard a Scottish fishing boat smuggling Chinese into the United Kingdom.
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada on 11 September 2006 and was also shown at the Max Ophüls Festival in Germany, the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic, the Copenhagen International Film Festival in Denmark and the Ourense International Film Festival in Spain.
There is a 2014 Korean film, Haemoo, with the same story which is attributed to a 2007 stage play by the same name.
The film begins showing a group of farmers from China's Fujian province speaking to a Snakehead (a smuggler of people), telling him the false stories they will use for sympathy in the West.
The Providence, a Scottish fishing trawler from Peterhead, lands at the docks in Oostende, Belgium where all of the crew but the Skipper (Lewis) debark. His son, Seán (Compston), the ship's crewman, Riley (Mullan), and the cook (Robertson) then go to an all-night café before splitting up; Seán phones and goes to meet a contact, Riley visits a local brothel and the cook remains at the café. Seán meets his contact, a local man named Pol (Hark Bohm), in a dockside warehouse in the hope of being paid to smuggle cigarettes tax-free. Pol has no cigarettes, however, and instead offers Seán a large sum of money to smuggle a group of Chinese immigrants into the United Kingdom. Seán reluctantly agrees as he and his father are heavily indebted after failing to catch enough fish to pay the mortgage. Riley returns to find the Chinese aboard the ship, but he and Seán agree not to inform the Skipper or the cook.
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