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True NorthNick Broomfield's film Ghosts tracked the shadowy reality of life for illegal Chinese immigrants working unseen and unsupervised in the UK. First time writer-director Steve Hudson's powerful human traffic drama True North stands as the back story to Broomfield's film by following those unrecognised lives as they attempt to enter the UK's unregistered economy.
Riley (Mullan) and Sean (Compston) are cod fishermen working the waters between Scotland and Belgium. Riley's a hard-drinking, porn-consuming seaman. Sean is the determined young son of the boat's distant Skipper (Lewis). Times are hard, catches are meagre and none of them have anywhere else to go. In Ostend Sean goes behind his father's back and tries to arrange an illegal shipment of cigarettes. In an example of the grim irony that hovers at the edge the film, Sean's contact doesn't approve of smoking, but is able to offer a far more profitable cargo: a hold full of Chinese immigrants.
With misgivings, Sean accepts and Riley becomes his uncertain accomplice. All they have to do is carry the Chinese from Ostend back to Peterhead without their skipper - or customs - twigging. The price of success: a very welcome four grand. The cost of failure? Don't even think about it. How could anything go wrong?
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.
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