Spoilers of the North

The Sunfish

2014

Kesse is a third generation fisherman, living in a small coastal town in Northern Jutland. Life trudges along without surprises, but all this is about to change. The fishing industry is hit by financial crisis and the small fishing boats are swiftly put out of competition by big corporations. In desperation, Kesse tries to find a way out of his hopeless plight and has to resort to dishonest means, on top of having to fire his best friend and lone employee. As if this wasn't enough, he gets an unwelcome guest on-board in the form of marine biologist Gerd from Copenhagen, sent to study the fishing. Søren Balle's debut feature is a funny and touching film about love, friendship and the difficult art of dealing with change.

Nativity

After disappearing during a dive at sea, Cristián, a Chilean fisherman trapped in his own violence and guilt, returns months later to his village, physically and spiritually changed. Suspected of not being himself and haunted by visions and secrets from the past, he begins a surreal journey towards redemption with Marisol, a woman marked by her own trauma. In this world where the boundaries between the human and the mythical are blurred, both must face their deepest scars to be reborn or lost forever.

Rape and Death of a Housewife

1978

Three young boys drunkenly rape a woman named Emiko, the wife of a man they've developed a friendship with. She dies of heart failure during the attack. Her chicken farmer husband, incapable of dealing with her death tends to her corpse as though it were still alive completely unable to accept her demise.

Porgy and Bess

1959

In the early 1900s, the fictional Catfish Row section of Charleston, South Carolina serves as home to a black fishing community. Crippled beggar Porgy, who travels about in a goat-drawn cart, loves the drug-addicted Bess, who lives with stevedore Crown, the local bully.

True North

2007

The crew of a bankrupt Scottish trawler turn to smuggling illegal immigrants over the stormy waters of the North Sea.

The Land of Morning Calm

2024

Feeling stuck, young fisherman Yong-su sees no hope in his future - like a fish in a net. As a last resort, he plans an insurance scam by staging his disappearance, hoping to provide a better life for his Vietnamese wife and his ageing mother. At the centre of this scheme is his captain, Yeong-guk, who reluctantly reports Yong-su missing. However, when Yong-su’s mother refuses to connect her son’s disappearance with his death, the white lie snowballs into something harder to chew.

Seabreaker

2022

Santi is a teenage father who lives in a small coastal town. During the day he has a job as a fisherman, while at night he smuggles seafood. While his girlfriend Lucia takes care of their baby all by herself, Santi, absent and overwhelmed by responsibility, seeks refuge and redemption in the sea.

Arctic Flight

1952

Mike Wein, an Alaskan bush pilot operating the the Bering Sea area, makes friends with John W. Wetherby, posing as a wealthy United States businessman. But, in reality, he is a Russian spy on his way to Siberia carrying microfilms of the United States' defense installations.

Captains Courageous

1937

Harvey, the arrogant and spoiled son of an indulgent absentee-father, falls overboard from a transatlantic steamship and is rescued by a fishing vessel on the Grand Banks. Harvey fails to persuade them to take him ashore, nor convince the crew of his wealth. The captain offers him a low-paid job, until they return to port, as part of the crew that turns him into a mature, considerate young man.

The First Kiss

1928

The Talbots, formerly one of the Eastern Shore's first families, have gone to seed: Pap is a drunk, soddenly decaying in his ruined ancestral home, and three of his sons (William, Carol, and Ezra) are lazy, shiftless young men. Mulligan, Pap's second son who supports the entire family by oyster fishing, falls in love with wealthy Anna Lee, but when he first kisses her, she calls him "white trash."

The Sea

2002

Wealthy, aging patriarch Thordur assembles his scattered heirs in his remote Icelandic fishing village to discuss the future of the family fishery. But bringing everyone together unleashes a storm of long-repressed dark family secrets.

Blood Diamond

2006

An ex-mercenary turned smuggler. A Mende fisherman. Amid the explosive civil war overtaking 1999 Sierra Leone, these men join for two desperate missions: recovering a rare pink diamond of immense value and rescuing the fisherman's son, conscripted as a child soldier into the brutal rebel forces ripping a swath of torture and bloodshed countrywide.