November 26, 2022
Dumitru (Nikolai Becker) was a 24-year old young man from Romania. At the port of Algeciras in the southern part of Spain, he was able to sneak onto a Taiwanese cargo vessel under Capt. Tsai (Alexandre Nguyen) destined for Canada. He was discovered by a group of Filipino crew members, namely the bosun Joel (Soliman Cruz) and his friends Allan (Bartholome "Bart" Guingona) and Bernardo (Emmanuel "Noel" Sto. Domingo).
Being a very religious man, Joel took pity on the young man, hid him in one of the empty rooms near the engine, and would bring him food and drink that he could sneak out. However, as Dumitru's impatience and panic inside his pitch-dark solitary confinement grew in intensity, paranoia was also boiling up on board as the Filipino crewmen began suspect that their Taiwanese ship officers are already onto their big secret.
Romanian writer-director Mihai Mincan used a variety of languages -- English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Tagalog and Romanian -- to deliver this story dealing with international issues that was based on real-life events. Joel and Dumitru understood and spoke English and Spanish, but occasionally they delivered lines in their native language and this can get confusing whether the other party understood what was said or not.
The manner Mincan told his story was very intense, suffused with a constant feeling of claustrophobia whether in the darkness below deck or in the maze of containers on deck. This was achieved with all the extreme closeups by cinematographer George Chiper-Lillemark, enhanced by the film editing by Dragos Apetri. The heavy atmosphere of uncertain danger was further achieved with the suspenseful musical score of Marius Leftarache.
The tension in those scenes of Capt. Tsai with Joel and Allan was so thick, it was suffocating -- whether it was in the young captain's sterile office, or in that rowdy karaoke night party. Nikolai Becker's desperate Dumitru can elicit conflicting emotions from anger to pity. Soliman Cruz absolutely gave it his everything in that outstanding final sequence, with his extreme inner turmoil reflected on his weathered face, wet with tears, snot and drool. 8/10.
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