In the beginning, there were hopes, arrogances, energies, and The American Dream, in its two main variants: the rural-bucolic one, and the urban-mercantile one. Then, the suffocation set in.

Panting or quick breaths, the roaring wind, the metallic beeping of threatening machinery, constantly incomprehensible, buzzing lights, the guttural whistles of horns or sirens, rattles, sometimes accompanied by flickering lights with unknown sources, along with many other forms of uncertain whirring. When characters enter and exit out of focus, this doesn’t happen because the filmmaker wants to direct our gaze towards what he’d like us to see within a frame, but because their movements are so jerky, and they’re so close to the camera that even if someone would want to tame it, they wouldn’t really have any way to succeed. It’s not something new, per se, but feature film debutante Mihai Mincan masters, with an implausibly firm hand, the type of pretentious construction that we know in the works of Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, that we (much) more often than not designate as “visceral”.

Just like in the case of so many other recent Romanian films, which may or may not be attributed to the larger Romanian New Wave, here, too, one may argue that a dilemma is at hand and that the one facing the dilemma is a male protagonist. This time around, however, he isn’t a middle-class Romanian that must face the consequences of cheating (romantically or economically), but rather, a Filipino sailor that is in the middle of a food chain. Clandestine passenger Dumitru (Niko Becker) is counting on the goodwill of the crew on a transatlantic ship in order to smuggle himself onto American territory. Without his knowledge (but under the eyes of everyone), the way these unwelcome passengers are dealt with by the cargo boat’s management is to throw them into the ocean and so, from a certain point onwards, the film tells the story of two unequal power relations. Dumitru is wholly dependent, in terms of freedom of movement, on Joel (Soliman Cruz), who decides to help him. But Joel is also dependent on the vigilance of his boss, officer Chen (Olivier Ho Hio Hen), the crew captain.

The confrontation between the harsh, taciturn masculinity of Joel and Dumitru’s post-adolescent ingenuity entails the promise of at least one form of abuse. Joel’s darker sides pertain to his hesitations, but also because his act of charity is fueled by both his own beliefs (despite their ethnic, racial, and linguistic differences, the two share the same Christian religion) and his envy of other crew members, of different nationalities, doubled down by a series of class animosities. His higher-ups are all Taiwanese (and he categorizes them all, en masse, as evil) while not only he, but the entire Filipino micro-community on the ship seems to be acutely aware of its status, albeit processing it differently (some of his colleagues seem to seek out the middle-way between rebellion and collaborationism, gossiping about their bosses behind their backs, while still trying, insofar possible, to heed their orders).

But the essence lies in that very amorphous, hard to isolate, and harder to formulate quality. A lot of flair is needed to shoot, like so many others before, clouds of cigarette smoke or a party with many drunken men without obtaining a result that is trivial, complacent, or disposable, but to add another layer to the sensorial or narrative shell of the film. As such, one could call To The North a promising debut – or even the Romanian feature of the year – (n.r. of 2022, when the film was seen), but that wouldn’t be nearly enough.

To the tunes of Alessandro Cortini, who is featured with three of his compositions on the film’s soundtrack, and with Nicolas Becker’s sound design, To The North is, before all else – an excellent thriller, with Taiwanese worker Chen as a detective of sorts (tactful, if not even outright sadistic) and the Filipino workers as conspirators – a naval oeuvre, equally an impeccable choreography and cartography of the labyrinth, hideout or prison that this container-filled cargo boat is, an indifferent metal monster that, in one way or another, is never silent in any of its corners, textures, and rough edges.

To The North is in cinemas starting 17th March.

Cătălin Olaru

Film reviewer since 2009, artistic director of "Divan" Fil Festival (2017 - 2018), and HipTrip Travel Film Festival (2016 - 2018). Winner of the 2012 Alex Leo Șerban scholarship (TIFF), in 2016 of the competition "Be a film reviewer at Cannes" (Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest). He was published in "Politicile filmului" and “Filmul tranziţiei”.