To the North

To the North can be described as a slow-burn moral thriller, but that gives us only a superficial idea of what it is really about. The film itself works purposefully with the contrast of the outside and the inside. It presents us with seemingly clearly arranged situations and literally polarises the characters and key peripeteias as good and bad. As the runtime elapses, however, the narrative doesn’t just leave the viewer to experience the tension, paranoia and claustrophobia with the characters trapped in a cargo ship. At the same time, it also shows the existing points of view as being ambivalent and puts forth an intimate drama of good intentions and unforeseen consequences. Mainly, however, it chips away at the original poles of good and evil until only the exposed personalities of the individual characters remain, with their own moral hell stemming from their opposing personal life stories, motivations and responsibilities. As a result, To the North is about boundaries, though not so much the geopolitical boundaries that so greatly influence people’s actions, but mainly the interpersonal ones on which everything ultimately falls apart. Considering that this is a feature debut, Mihai Mincan’s film turns out to be an unprecedented, well-crafted and brilliantly thought-out work. Everything from the consistently slow pace to the ghostly ambient soundtrack serves to draw viewers in and gently prepare them for the merciless disintegration in the climax. ____ Huge thanks are owed to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for including this magnificent film in its programme. At the same time, no thanks at all are owed to the festival for the effort that one has to exert in order to escape the pandemonium of the boisterous crowd so that the catharsis one gets from To the North can die away somewhere in the peace and quiet of the night. (04/07/2023)

This well-made debut works with the subject of morality and existential fear, but because of its sluggish pace, it smoulders very slowly  and even the suspense builds only minimally. For that matter, the film is given more spark by the tense relations between the Taiwanese officers and the Filipino engineers on the cargo ferry than from the situations arising from the motif of the migrant secretly concealed in the bowels of the ship. (03/07/2023)