Cargo

Director: Clive Gordon
Screenwriters: Paul Laverty

Institute History

  • 2006 Sundance Film Festival

Description

This taut, cerebral thriller by award-winning documentary filmmaker Clive Gordon showcases an outstanding cast and a smart, multilayered screenplay. In this intensely crafted drama, a young backpacker, Chris (Daniel Bruhl), is traveling around Africa when he gets into trouble, loses his passport, and decides to stow away aboard a rusty cargo ship to flee the local police and get back to Europe. Discovered shortly after putting to sea, he quickly realizes that this is no ordinary voyage: it features a crew of hopeless, possibly even deranged, men; a mysteriously inscrutable captain (Peter Mullan), who holds absolute sway over the inhabitants of this insular floating isle; and a ship that seems to be burdened by untold secrets.

Having innocently moved from the frying pan to the fire, Chris faces a resentful, threatened, and threatening crew, whose only human face is the chef (Luis Tosar). Chris must struggle to survive in a world where moral order and indeed life and death are at the whim of one man.

Beautifully shot and filled with exemplary performances, Cargo is both a tale of survival and a quest for truth. This contemporary voyage, with its Joseph Conrad-like exploration of the dilemmas of individual choice, is a strikingly relevant drama for our times.

— Geoffrey Gilmore

Screening Details

As you use our Online Archives, please understand that the information presented from Festivals, Labs, and other activities is taken directly from official publications from each year. While this information is limited and doesn't necessarily represent the full list of participants (e.g. actors and crew), it is the list given to us by the main film/play/project contact at the time, based on the space restrictions of our publications. Each entry in the Online Archives is meant as a historical record of a particular film, play, or project at the time of its involvement with Sundance Institute. For this reason, we can only amend an entry if a name is misspelled, or if the entry does not correctly reflect the original publication. If you have questions or comments, please email [email protected]