BFI London Film Festival: Cargo

BFI Film Festival: 243 features. 67 countries. 15 cinemas. 12 days. One Festival.

When the craggy patriarch of a struggling North Sea fishing company falls overboard, his eldest son has to take over the family business, igniting dark tensions between three brothers.

LFF alumnus Gilles Coulier delivers this finely observed feature debut about masculine codes of behaviour in a family notably absent of women. Stern and serious Jean (brilliant Flemish actor Sam Louwyck) is single father to an 8-year-old, and sees a dying fisheries business as having no possible future. Younger sibling Francis must hide his secret lover and desperately wants to escape to seek happiness.

Only black sheep William, returning home to an indifferent welcome, wants to carry on the family trade. Cinematographer David Williamson (Flemish Heaven, LFF2016) draws out the blues and blacks of each shot of this powerful film, emphasising the age-old traditions of this world and the turbulent seas to which the family are inexorably linked.

(Notes by Tricia Tuttle)

Cargo, dir. Gilles Coulier, Belgium-Netherlands-France 2017, 91 mins

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