Director: Steve Hudson
UK/Germany/Ireland 2006 92 mins
Martin Compston, Gary Lewis, Peter Mullan, Angi Lee, Steven Robertson

True North is a low budget British drama with a strong ensemble cast of familiar faces directed by Steve Hudson for his first feature. The film has won awards at film festivals in Pamplona, Karlovy Vary, the Celtic Film and Television Awards and Cherbourg and has been nominated in four categories for the 2007 BAFTA Scotland awards.

Synopsis

Martin Compston plays Sean, the ship's mate and the son of the Skipper (Gary Lewis) aboard The Providence, a mortgaged to the hilt Scottish fishing trawler. With the Skipper deep in denial about the ship's financial problems, Sean takes it upon himself to do a spot of smuggling, only instead of the black market cigarettes he's expecting, he's offered a group of Chinese immigrants.

In desperation, Sean agrees to hide the immigrants, enlisting the help of his crewman, Riley (Peter Mullan) and insisting that they keep their Chinese stowaways a secret from his father. Meanwhile, a 12-year-old Chinese girl (Angel Li) slips away unnoticed below decks and begins stealing from the kitchen, which confuses the hell out of the ship's slow-witted cook (Steven Robertson).

Shot on board a real trawler as it's tossed across the North Sea, Hudson's film is a potent, issue-led drama inspired by real events that took place in 2000. As the black market's focus has transferred from goods to cheap labour, audiences have become familiar with films which attempt to tell the stories of those forced to leave their homes to follow the euro, dollar or pound. Unusually, True North grounds its drama not in the system's victims, but its facilitators - Sean and Riley. When tragedy strikes on board the boat, we know no more about the Chinese than they do. Their anonymity is appropriate - holed up in the dark without food or water and unable to communicate with Sean or Riley, the Chinese are entirely alien, their situation exacerbated by another grim irony: if the trawler arrives back in Scotland from a foreign port without a catch, it will be searched by Customs. But if the boat stops to fish, the Chinese in the hold could die before the boat makes it back to port. Sean and Riley are convinced they can fool the skipper and keep their human cargo a secret, but the skipper has his own problems and, like his crew, he has nothing to lose - except his boat if they get caught.

The film makes its point powerfully, but it also operates as a gritty, claustrophobic thriller. Mullan brings authentic, whisky-soaked force to Riley, but also finds a well of sympathy beneath the dour exterior. Most of all, it's an impressive feat of filmmaking, the battered boat rolling and dipping through vicious North Sea storms. The sudden conclusion and a lyrical coda mean the film finishes on a slightly inconsistent note, but True North remains a potent example of socially-engaged storytelling.

Steve Hudson was born in London in 1969 and grew up in England and South America. After drama school in London, he worked as an actor and director in Britain, Cuba, Belgium, Germany and Italy. Since 1996 he has lived in Germany where he got his first experience of writing acting and directing for television and film. Steve's first short film, Goodbye premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2004, where it won the UIP prize for Best European Short Film. True North is his first feature film.

Peter Mullan's first foray into film was in Ken Loach's Riff-Raff (1990). After that, it seemed that he had roles in every movie filmed in Scotland, from Braveheart (1995) to Trainspotting (1996), before becoming a fully fledged star with his award-winning performance in Loach's My Name Is Joe (1998). The subsequent Irish thriller, Ordinary Decent Criminal (2000), did little for his career, apart from giving him the chance to star with Kevin Spacey. However, he proved that he is a name to watch with Orphans (1998), his writing/directorial debut which won four awards at the Venice Film Festival.

Martin Compston was discovered by Ken Loach who cast him in the lead role in Sweet Sixteen for which he was nominated Best Actor at Cannes in 2004, and won most promising newcomer at the British Independent Film Awards, and Most Promising New Talent - BAFTA (Scotland) 2002, amongst many other critical award nominations. Martin has played three seasons in BBC TV's Monarch of the Glen.

Gary Lewis was born in Glasgow and since his debut in 1994's Shallow Grave alongside Ewan MacGregor, he has appeared in over 40 films including My Name is Joe.