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News | HBO’S `DEADLY VOYAGE’ AMBITIOUSLY SHEDS LIGHT…

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News | HBO’S `DEADLY VOYAGE’ AMBITIOUSLY SHEDS LIGHT ON A GLOBAL PROBLEM

It’s a seagoing horror story that might have come from the pen of Edgar Allan Poe or Joseph Conrad.

Eight stowaways, fleeing the tropics of Africa for the “promised land” of New York, are caught at sea by the crew of a troubled freighter whose captain and crew face heavy fines if stowaways are found aboard.

But there’s a way out–not for the stowaways, but for the crew.

Murder. One by one.

And the most horrifying thing about this maritime thriller, “Deadly Voyage,” premiering at 7 p.m. Saturday on HBO, is that it actually happened.

“That’s what got me into the film,” said Omar Epps, the “Higher Learning” star who plays Kingsley Ofusu, the only survivor of the slaughter. “It’s a true story. It’s different when it’s a great idea, but it’s fiction. This is living history. That gave me the strength and the focus to do this role.”

Actor Danny Glover, who participated in the film as executive producer, had similar feelings:

“You’d think this was something that might have happened 50 years ago or some other time before that. But this was just four years ago. It’s amazing, mind-boggling.”

The ship involved was Russian–the MC Ruby. British actor Joss Ackland, who was the villain in Glover’s action/thriller hit “Lethal Weapon 2,” is the heavy here as the ship’s aging, alcoholic captain.

Despite their adversarial roles on screen, he and Glover are fast friends.

“He’s a wonderful man,” said Glover. “A very lovely man.”

David Suchet, known to PBS “Mystery” audiences as Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, plays Viachos, a shipping line official who unknowingly precipitates the murders by clamping down hard on stowaway violations with the threat of huge fines and is later appalled at the consequences of his get-tough policy.

Jean-Claude LaMarre, of “Dead Presidents,” plays Epps’ brother and Sean Pertwee, of “Blue Juice,” is a boxer who joins the stowaways. The rest of the black cast is Ghanaian.

Stories not often told

This is the second based-on-fact movie HBO has produced in collaboration with the BBC. The first, last year’s grim “The Affair,” counted Harry Belafonte as executive producer and dealt with the actual story of a black American serviceman during World War II who was hanged when the husband of his English lover insisted he be prosecuted for rape.

“These aren’t stories that often sell tickets in the theater,” Glover said, “but they’re certainly stories that hopefully bring us a little closer to what we are, and who we should be, as human beings.”

“Deadly Voyage” was filmed aboard a ship moored at the Takoradi Docks in Ghana, on Africa’s tropical Atlantic coast.

“The climate was almost unbearable,” said Epps. “But it was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my life, and I was doing one of the greatest films I’ll ever be in. When times got hard, I would tell the other cast members, `Listen. After each take we get to go up and have some water or drink some juice and get some fresh air. We’re telling a true story. There are still some people whose spirits linger on in this ship. This is nothing compared to what they went through.’ That’s what kept me going.”

The actual stowaways hid out in a main hold of the freighter, atop a huge stack of cocoa bean bags. After they were discovered, they were put in a dark vertical shaft used for storing heavy anchor chain. Re-creating that narrow space was the only instance in which a sound stage was used instead of the interior of the ship.

Reasons remain the same

The stowaways were ordinary men, most of them with families, hoping to get to America and find work. One hoped to be a cabdriver, another a chef. Epps’ character planned to become an engineer.

“These kids’ intentions were noble,” said Glover. “They’re poetic–and remindful of immigrants who came to this country a century or more ago. They wanted to work for a better life. It’s the same reason why people left England and Germany 200 years ago to come here–for a better life. To work.”

Epps, who is from Brooklyn and lives in Jersey City, acquired an impeccable Ghanaian accent in preparing for the part, but was asked to alter it into a more “British-Ghanaian” one to be more understandable.

The Russian crewmen and actual murderers are portrayed, not as arch, evil fiends, but as ordinary men who reacted wrongly when finding themselves in a desperate situation. The captain faced dismissal if a stowaway was found.

“It wasn’t all racism,” said Epps. “They just wanted to save themselves and they were willing to go to that extent to do so. The fact that they were dealing with Africans made it that much easier to make that decision. I think if they were any other type of stowaways they might have just taken the blow on the cheek or figured out some other way to solve their problem. But this was just, `Let’s get rid of the evidence,’ which happened to be human life.

“It’s a harsh life being a crewman. It’s just like any other work but you’re on a ship, so it’s kind of a city that has its own rules. And when they finish their work, they drink.”

He and Glover both said they hope the film will help Americans better understand the immigration problem.

“That’s a real big picture to look at,” Epps said. “I think the thing I want people to step away with is that this was happening in 1991. It’s not a period piece from the 1800s.

“That will really be a wake-up call. In Third World countries–all over the world, not just Africa–people don’t have the opportunity to live to their fullest potential. But they all have the desire so they take chances risking their lives and their families. There’s so much to be done politically and economically for those countries.”

The captain and first mate of MC Ruby were sentenced to 25 years to life and the rest of the murder crew got 20 to life.

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The cruellest voyage

'I don't want my son to live the same life I have led. I don't want my family to suffer. We are all in the same world. Some people are suffering and some people are enjoying and I don't know the reason why."

That was the final paragraph of a story that I wrote for the Guardian nearly 14 years ago - the words of Kingsley Ofosu, a 23-year-old Ghanaian who had just endured a terrifying ordeal.

In search of a solution to his young family's poverty in Ghana, he had stowed away on a cargo ship with his brother and six friends. On board, they found a ninth stowaway, who had crept on to the ship in Cameroon. Six days later, on the high seas, they were discovered by the crew, who were afraid that they would lose their jobs if they arrived in Europe with the migrants. And so, after locking them in a tiny, dark storage room for three days, the seamen set about murdering the would-be migrants.

Ofosu was the only survivor. As he watched his brother Albert being shot and tossed over the side to join the seven other corpses in the churning sea, he managed to escape from the crew. For three days, he hid in the dark rafters of the hold as the seamen searched for him. Finally, the ship put in to Le Havre to unload some of its cargo of cocoa beans. With extraordinary resourcefulness, he not only found his way out of the locked hold by shinning up a ventilation shaft but had the foresight to break open a sack of cocoa beans and plant his Ghanaian identity card deep among them to prove that his unbelievable story was true.

Several months later, I found him in the French equivalent of a Salvation Army hostel in Le Havre, awaiting the trial of the six crewmen - who had been arrested by the town's police - worrying about his family back in Ghana, struggling, because of his lack of French, with simple problems, and in effect homeless and penniless.

The Guardian story gave him a handhold on a future. Readers sent him cash and books and even a sewing machine for his wife Agnes back in Ghana. Three different film companies started pitching for his story and eventually one of them signed him up, giving him $10,000 and the promise of more once filming began. We fell into a routine of speaking each week on the phone, slowly solving his problems - a job, a flat to rent, a carte de séjour from the authorities, permission to fly home to see Agnes. When they had a child, he named the baby boy after me.

The last time I saw him was in November 1995 in Rouen, at the trial of the six crewmen. Ofosu gave his evidence, clear and strong, though he cried at the memory of his brother's death. Two of the crew were jailed for life, three for 20 years, and one was acquitted. Then Ofosu and I lost touch, until a few weeks ago, when I flew to Ghana with a BBC radio producer and found him in a small flat in a dusty suburb of the capital, Accra.

The story of Ofosu's missing years is the natural sequel to the story the Guardian carried nearly 14 years ago. In a way, it's about all of the millions of global hobos now trying to smuggle themselves through the legal and bureaucratic and harsh physical barriers that protect the developed world from their aspirations. It's about bad luck, bad people and the endless underlying weakness of a poor man in a rich man's world.

Sitting in the bare living room of his flat in Accra, Ofosu described how, soon after we lost contact with each other, he was dipped into a world of unimaginable wealth. He was flown to Ghana by the film company, Union Pictures, and given a cheque for $67,500. Seven months later, in June 1996, back in France, he took a phone call from Union Pictures, asking him to fly to London. He went out to Le Havre airport where he was staggered to find a private plane that flew him to Gatwick as its sole passenger. In London, he watched a press preview of the film, Deadly Voyage, cried again and gave interviews to journalists before being flown to New York, this time in a luxury first-class seat. As a film-company limousine swept him into the city, he looked up at the skyscrapers of Manhattan.

He was installed in a room in a five-star hotel, the Four Seasons, just off Park Avenue. "I was the only black there. Everybody was looking at me." Two days later, he was the guest of honour at the US premiere and, in his wallet, he still carries the much-folded photograph of himself sitting between Omar Epps, who played his part in the film, and Danny Glover, the black American actor who had been recruited as an executive producer to give the film credibility with an American audience that was unused to watching movies with African heroes. The film company laid on a limo to take him wherever he wanted, although when he told them he wanted to visit the Bronx because he had heard there were a lot of Africans there, they refused.

And then, suddenly, he was on his own again, back in Le Havre, trying to realise his dream of a new life for himself and his family, struggling at every step. He started work in a restaurant, cutting up potatoes in the kitchen. After just one day, the boss phoned him to tell him a fire had destroyed the place. He went to the prefecture to ask permission for Agnes and his two young sons to join him. They wanted birth certificates and marriage certificates, so he had to spend precious money flying back to Ghana to obtain them. When he got back to Le Havre, the prefecture told him that the paperwork was not enough: he must be in full-time work. And there was none. Worse, as a migrant, Ofosu was entitled to unemployment benefit for only three months. Two years earlier, he had registered at a college in Le Havre to learn French and start a three-year course in civil engineering. Soon, without work and with the film company's money seeping out of his bank account, he had to give up his studies and go back to Ghana to think again.

A year later, he returned to France, this time to Paris, where he stayed with a Ghanaian friend in Fontenay-sous-Bois. Now, in spite of being fluent in three languages and two-thirds of the way to being qualified as an engineer, he ended up working night shifts cleaning junk-food kitchens. Meanwhile, he kept reaching out to open doors to his future - yet each one stayed locked against him.

At the end of the trial in Rouen, the court had ordered that he be paid €100,000 in compensation for what he suffered. Yet, no money had arrived. Now, three years later, in 1998, he received a letter from the French ministry of justice asking for his bank details so that the payment could be made. He sent them. No money came through. Eventually, he went to the Ministry of Justice building with their letter, but the guards would not let him in. He found a lawyer, who wrote to the ministry asking for the money. Many months passed. There was still no money. He found his way to a different French government building.

"What do you want?" asked the guard.

"I want my money," he said.

"It doesn't work like that," said the guard, turning him away.

Twelve years after the compensation order, he has still not received his €100,000.

He also believed he was owed more money by Union Pictures. They had agreed to pay him 1.5% of the production budget for the film. The cheque for $67,500 that they had given him in Ghana was based on the best available estimate of that budget, but Ofosu had since heard from one of those involved that the real budget could have turned out to be much higher. They had also agreed to pay him 10% of the net profits from the film. He had seen none of this.

He hired a lawyer in Paris, who wrote to Union Pictures, pointing out that his contract gave Ofosu the right to an independent audit of the film's accounts and asking for the figures so that any final payments could be made. Union Pictures wrote back to say they didn't have the figures. The film had been funded by the BBC and the American cable channel HBO, and neither had sent them reports on costs and sales: "Please be assured that we are doing our best to extract the information from both the BBC and HBO." Months passed. Years passed. Kingsley heard nothing more. He wrote to the BBC and to HBO. They wrote back - without the information he needed.

Twelve years after the production of Deadly Voyage, he has still not received the information to which his contract entitles him, nor has he received any further payment that he may be owed.

In 2004, struggling from one low-paid job to another, he decided to gamble everything in a final attempt to build a life in Europe. He realised that he could buy second-hand electrical goods in France very cheaply and sell them in Ghana for something like five times the amount. So he spent the last remains of his film money and the little he had saved from his work on filling a shipping container with old television sets, computers, video players and fridges, sent them to Ghana and succeeded in selling them for a healthy profit. Encouraged, he set out to do the same again, this time filling six containers with second-hand clothes and shoes as well as electrical goods. It proved to be a disaster.

Ofosu put everything he had into filling the containers. A friend in Ghana came in as his partner, undertaking to pay for the import duties and harbour costs. At the last moment, the partner pulled out. The containers were marooned at the port of Tema, just outside Accra, and Ofosu couldn't afford to get them out. With each passing day, the cost of harbour storage rose alarmingly. He asked friends for money, but they had none. He wrote to the only wealthy people he knew - his old friends at Union Pictures and HBO, who had once been willing to pay for private jets and limousines for him - but they declined to help.

Eventually, he found a businesswoman in Accra who agreed to pay the harbour dues and recoup her investment from the sale of the goods. She and Kingsley signed a legal agreement, but then it turned out that she couldn't afford the harbour bill. After months of delay, she paid for just two of the six containers to be released, sold the contents and then told Kingsley she had managed to earn less than a quarter of what he had expected. Aghast, he persuaded her to sign a new agreement, allowing him to sell the remaining four containers himself on the condition that he used the income to pay her the balance of what she claimed she was still owed.

He found two dealers who agreed to pay for two more containers to be released from the port. They then vanished with the contents, informing his mother that they would come back and do her serious damage if Ofosu tried to find them. And the businesswoman went to the police, alleging that he had stolen the containers and breached her agreement with him. He spent 30 days in a police cell before he got bail and is waiting for the case to come to court. In the meantime, the remaining two containers have sat so long in the port that they have been seized by the government.

Now he has nothing. I tried to intervene with Union Pictures. To make matters more complicated, the company has gone bankrupt, but its former head, Bradley Adams, alerted to this story, has sent a series of messages to the BBC and HBO urgently requesting their costs and sales reports. So far, neither company has delivered.

A few years ago, on a trip to Ghana, Ofosu was approached by a young man who told him he was thinking of stowing away on a ship to go to Europe. Ofosu recalls telling him: "My brother, let me tell you something. Everybody hates enemies, but I do not advise even my enemies to stow away. It's very, very dangerous. In Europe, what you think is there, is not like that. It's not the place we thought. Life is hard."

The rich man's world is well-defended, with its complex bureaucracy, its harsh limits on state benefits for migrants, its lack of the kind of family loyalties that still work as a safety net in a country like Ghana, its casual racism and its infamous "carrier liability" laws that first inspired the crew to murder Ofosu's fellow stowaways to avoid the repercussions of the fine that would have been imposed on the ship's owner if they had allowed them to reach Europe alive.

Ofosu and I sit outside his flat, with his wife and his four children, including Nick, now 12, who is clearly amazed at this strange Englishman whose name he shares. Over and over again, Ofosu's conversation returns to that same anxiety which troubled him when I first met him - this family of his and their uncertain future. And when he asks himself the question, he still can't think of any good reason why some people are suffering and some people are enjoying, even though we all live in the same world.

· Revert to Type, where Nick Davies visits Kingsley Ofosu in Accra, is on BBC Radio 4 tonight at 8pm.

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Africa Is a Country

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The haunting draw of the West

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To be African means at some point to desire to leave. African cinema can provide solace for our tortured relationship to the West and our own continent.

Still from Atlantics © 2019.

I was about five when I first saw fellow Ghanaians on-screen. They were in a group of stowaways trying to swap Ghana for the promise of the white man’s land. It was to be a scarring experience. My sense of excitement, adventure, and even pride was slowly replaced with horror as I watched most of this group be murdered by the ship’s white crew. The film I refer to is Deadly Voyage (1995), the true story of one Kingsley Ofosu’s attempt to escape poverty in Ghana, his motherland. Despite the small wealth that came with selling his story to Hollywood, Ofosu ended up back in Ghana, the same land he and many others continued to plot and scheme to escape.

At that point in life, growing up in Botswana after birth in the UK, I had barely spent time in Ghana. My dad had faced struggles of his own in the Queen’s backyard and longed for his homeland. It was stunning to my naïve self to see the horrors my countrymen endured just to become second-class citizens in Europe. Why were they leaving the home my dad wanted to return to? Deadly Voyage , while not wholly a product of African cinema, is in conversation with some of Africa’s most iconic films. Like them, it reflects on this question and the failings that force us to dream of better prospects in the lands of those that once oppressed us.

The striking debut feature by the father of African cinema, Ousmane Sembène, La Noire de ( Black Girl ) (1966), set the tone for this lineage, which would run until Mati Diop’s Atlantics (2019). Like Deadly Voyage , Black Girl can be traced to a news story about an African maid in France who died in her employer’s home. Also, like the stowaways in Deadly Voyage or the cocoa beans they hide on or the generations of Africans trafficked during the slave trade, the central character in Black Girl , Diouana, a nanny in Senegal, is a mere commodity. Thinking she would be caring for kids, she is reduced to cooking and cleaning. She never gets to go on her desired shopping trip. The promise of dignity and a cordial relationship with the West was a scam. The promise of decolonization was a scam.

Decolonization ultimately holds little meaning to most Africans. We are too bogged down with bare necessities to properly engage with the varying layers of our relationship with the West. For many, to “Japa” or embrace the “ I for lef Ghana ” mantra is the only logical response to the enduring hardship and exploitation by our elite and political class. Yes, to seek greener pastures abroad may be to accept second-class citizen status wherever, but it is better than to stay stuck in reverse in a place we call home. At least, that is the argument I think people make to themselves.

Consider the fantasy and nightmare that is Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki (1973). In his debut feature, naïve lovers Mory and Anta embody the enduring disenchantment of our youth. Mory, a cattle herder with seemingly just a motorbike and the clothes on his back to his name, is a deadbeat. Anta is in university but has little faith in education. Her mom calls her school a “clown show.” Their solution to their predicament is to steal and con their way to enough money left for France. This is the path that will doom their relationship. In Touki Bouki ’s most fascinating stretch, we get a glimpse of the type of men that would define Africa as we know it today. A group of student revolutionaries slut-shame Anta for not coming to meetings, and moments later, they all but lynch Mory, the kind of man such revolutionaries would purport to fight for.

Though Touki Bouki ultimately makes it clear that Mory and Anta are torn between violent poverty and white supremacists abroad (there is a chilling sequence of casual racism in the film’s coda), it is easy to lose sympathy for the lovers. The fact that people deciding to fully check out of their broken African systems vexes me plays a part. Aside from viewing the West as a utopia, some are also working to fake it until they make it. Thus begins the cycle of the destitute preferring to give off the appearance of wealth by touching the hem of Western society’s garment.

For those who are sucked into making the trip to the West, what price is paid? Mambety’s second feature film, Hyènes (1992), provides some insight. Here, an elderly woman, Ramatou, returns to her hometown after decades in the West. She is described as being “richer than the World Bank”  as the joyous community rolls out the welcome wagon. What follows is a barbed allegory about the eroding power of the West’s neoliberal ideals, crystallizing the sense that returnees, coming with their dollars and doped-up purchasing power, become parties to the world order that exploits Africa. We also see a loss of humanity, both figuratively and literally. Ramatou describes herself as more machine than human, with her array of gold prosthetics, and basically demands the soul of the community in exchange for her support. So who drew first blood? As is the trend in these films, African society betrayed Ramatou first and forced her to seek refuge in the West after falling victim to an unforgiving patriarchal system during her youth.

To try to answer this question is to consider the merits (as outlined by scholar Manthia Diawara) of colonial confrontational cinema, which is uncompromising in its jabs at the legacy of European imperialists, and those of social realism, African cinema, which examines the now and future with apprehension as our independence heroes sowed seeds for the underdevelopment of Africa. The father of African cinema’s filmography embodied this tension. Emitai (1971) and Camp De Tharoiye (1988) fire salvos at France, while Xala (1975) and even Moolaadé (2004) are critical of the treachery and brutality of our own kin. Ultimately, the truth is right down the middle, and the heartbreaking reality is our kin will continue to seek easement abroad in the poisonous bosom of the oppressor.

Revisiting some of the finest African films sometimes feels like an act of self-harm. In the best cases, these films are sometimes inspiring calls to resistance. But for the most part, travelling back to Sembène’s vision of Dakar only serves to remind us that the continent has been marking time in a gyre of violent incompetence, oppression, and despair for decades. One film with similar themes does manage to stand out— Atlantics . Mati Diop’s film is a beautiful gift to African cinephiles and is very much in conversation with her uncle’s Touki Bouki in the way it weaves tones, realism, and supernatural this time, producing a painful portrait of contemporary Africa, still rife with inequality and exploitation. Of course, it also features two young lovers ripped apart by the pull of the West.

I call it a gift because instead of the lingering despair and cynicism we get in the likes of Touki Bouki or Black Girl , we are given something unique—closure. It’s something many who lost loved ones to the slave trade or dangerous trips to the West could not give the loved ones they left behind. While Mati Diop displays thoughtfulness and tenderness for people forced to leave Africa, a sense of neglect and betrayal on the part of the people who left lingers. In Touki Bouki , lovers who seemed inseparable abandoned each other. In Black Girl , Diouana could be, somewhat harshly, seen to have abandoned not just her lover but her mother for Europe in what is much more than just familial separation.

The somewhat negative feelings are by design. The vision of African cinema is political to the hilt and is crafted to spark a reaction from viewers. Like Tunisian film critic Taher Cheriaa said, African cinema must be militant cinema. “It shall be first and foremost a cultural action with social and political value, or it will be nothing.”

But Atlantics proves that African cinema can provide solace from our tortured relationship with the West. Mati Diop displays thoughtfulness and tenderness for people forced to leave Africa and calls not just for reform or resistance but an outpouring of love and grace.

Ultimately, the overarching trend feels like it will remain Africa’s portion. As costs of living soar on the continent and governments collapse under their own immorality, we are seeing some of our brightest and also most vulnerable leave the continent to not only the West but the East. A number of our kin take up new nationalities and others suffer fates similar to their ancestors, who were traded as slaves. No matter the circumstance, our cinematic trailblazers have been clear about one thing—Africa ends up suffering for it, one way or the other.

Further Reading

African cinema into the future

• Sara Hanaburgh

In the era of market-driven streaming, what are the pitfalls and potentials for African cinema?

Two tales against neocolonialism

• Suvij Sudershan

Working-class men try unsuccessfully to integrate themselves into new economies in the films of Ousmane Sembene and Mrinal Sen.

Ousmane Sembene invented a new cinema for Africa

An interview with Samba Gadjigo, the late Ousmane Sembene’s longtime friend and official biographer about the resurgence of Sembene’s work.

The impotence of the political bourgeoisie

• Basia Cummings

Ousmane Sembene’s “Xala” (1974) is a powerful political narrative. At times edging toward the surreal, at others an acute depiction of the complexity of the freshly independent Senegal.

clock This article was published more than  27 years ago

HORROR ON THE HIGH SEAS

Little filmmaking talent is anywhere in evidence, but "Deadly Voyage" tells such a strong story that it's still likely to hold your interest. And its central performance, by Omar Epps as a terrorized stowaway on a huge freighter, seems stirringly heartfelt.

The film, premiering on HBO at 8 tonight, tells the apparently true story of nine men from Ghana who hid themselves on the ship while it was docked off the African coast in October 1992, hoping eventually to go to America after a scheduled stop in France. What they didn't know is that the shipping company had just decided to institute a get-tough policy on stowaways -- a policy that, as implemented in this case, proved not just tough but barbaric.

Epps plays Kingsley, the only one of the nine men who gets much character delineation in the bare-bones screenplay by Stuart Urban. Kingsley, whose wife is pregnant and who earns only a meager living, wins $1,000 in a lottery and, on the advice of a friend, decides to use the money for "bribes, food and a place to live while you find work" after sneaking free passage to the United States.

For some strange reason we get scenes featuring the captain of the ship (Joss Ackland) and a shipping company executive (David Suchet) instead of scenes devoted to the lives of the Ghanaians. There's even a gratuitous sequence showing sailors cavorting with naked hookers at the Hotel Delilah while the ship is being loaded.

The mostly Ukrainian crew includes a smattering of sadistic goons, especially the snarling first officer, played with consummate contemptibility by Sean Pertwee. About 34 minutes into the film, as the ship moves north, the stowaways are found and then, one by one, attacked and killed and thrown overboard into the churning ocean, until only our hero remains. The rest of the voyage becomes for him a desperate struggle for life as he hides in air vents and passageways while the crew and a pit bull pursue him.

It's such a pity that only Epps's character gets a chance to register as an individual. Maybe the film was radically trimmed at some stage in production and all the information about the other stowaways ended up on the cutting room floor -- sacrificed to the naked hookers and repetitious scenes of the captain and his crony getting plastered.

Also missing is a serious examination of whether the crew members' viciousness was spurred purely by fear of losing their jobs (they'd been threatened with dire consequences if stowaways were found) or also by plain old ugly racism. The first officer uses a racist epithet fairly late in the film, but the theme isn't really explored.

Epps is nothing if not stalwart, however; his eyes seem both imploring and accusing as they peer out from hiding places. His cry of "Murderers! Murderers!" echoes in the mind well after the film has ended. It's a remarkable performance, too, for the sheer physicality of it, and for the fact that Epps scores memorably without much help from dimwit director John MacKenzie.

MacKenzie and Urban both should have been left out on the high seas after turning in a film so rife with squandered opportunities. HBO is not having a very good year, and "Deadly Voyage" should have been much, much better. CAPTION: Omar Epps, prey in a lethal game of cat-and-mouse on "Deadly Voyage." CAPTION: Sean Pertwee is one of the cargo vessel's bad cats.

Deadly Voyage

Film details, brief synopsis, cast & crew, john mackenzie, luka javanovic, david dontoh, wakefield ackuaku, augustus kobina kudmson, brew riverson, technical specs.

Based on the terrifying true story of one ship and the nine stowaways hiding beneath its deck, who dream of finding wealth and happiness in America. But their existence threatens the career of the ship's captain, and when a lack of water forces them out of hiding, they become a problem to the overly ambitious officer; his solution is a very final, deadly one. One by one, the stowaways are to be taken from the ship's hold and slaughtered. The plan of the ship's officers cold-bloodedly proceeds, until one of the stowaways manages to escape. Now, somewhere in the deep bowels of the ship, he runs and hides as armed crew members hunt him down. As long as he is alive, the captain and his crew must take the risk that their plot will be uncovered. They must make him the final victim if they are to put an end to the Deadly Voyage.

Michael Byrne

Tomas lukes, carl antolin, levani ilia volokh, oscar provencal, alex kodela, stephanie cornicard, juliet asante, chiwetel ejiofor, henry nartey, ravil isyanov, sean pertwee, roman varshavsky, adewale akinnuoye-agbaje, andrew divoff, omanza eugene shaw, joss ackland, david suchet, george meyer, maxine burth, jean-claude lamarre, fred abuaku-asare, bradley adams, davies adjei, emmanuel adjetley, dan adjokathcer, adam aldridge, brian aldridge, john allotey, christine allsop, francis annan jr., francis annan, afari annobil, seth ashong, paschal awotwi, ekow baidoo, craig bariwck, constance barzay-browne, orin beaton, erica bensley, dick bernstein, becklyn boateng, adjetey boye, lucy bristow, wendy broom, jaki brown-karman, howard burden, colin callender, johnny carmichael, david carrigan, michael a carter, alan chesters, anthony cleal, ian corbould, paul corbould, cathy cosgrove, richard davies, sam degraft-johnson, bobby dhillon, gillian dodders, martin duncan, simon emanuel, george faber, james foran, simon fraser, kathy friend, roberta gardiner, danny glover, john goldschmidt, constantine gregory, brian hampton, brian harris, verity hawkes, ted hawkins, claire hirsch, simon holland, morgan johnson, dinah logan, kate mackenzie, david marsh, dedo mate-kole, david mellor, james metal, paul minume, caroline moore, charles nettey, clive noakes, robert ote nyansah, terry o'neill, sue parkinson, rob patridge, kieron phipps, fio kojo pobi, michael povey, trevor puckle, tony reading, mickey reeves, george s richardson, franc roddam, terry royce, crispian sallis, sammy seitz, dan shoring, helen smith, sam southwick, eddie stacey, kitty stanbrook, dave stapleton, gail stevens, heather storr, seth tandoh, raphael teiteh, emmanuel tetteh, gary thomas, darkoa tsibu, tony tucker, stuart urban, peter van der puije, graham walker, chris wheeldon, paul wrightson, miscellaneous notes.

Aired in United States June 15, 1996

Aired in United States June 5, 2007

Released in United States on Video November 19, 1996

Budget source: Viva Films 07/11/1994

Estimated budget: $5,000,000

Began shooting November 4, 1995.

Completed shooting January 1996.

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Deadly Voyage

1996, Drama, 1h 32m

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Deadly voyage   photos.

Hoping to find a better life, dockworker Kingsley Ofasa (Omar Epps) and eight other Ghanaian refugees stow away on a Ukrainian cargo ship headed for the United States via France. The ship's sailors discover the refugees when they search for water. Because of an earlier violation in New York City, the captain told the crew that they would be responsible for any new fines. The crew decides to avoid any penalty by murdering the stowaways, who must fight to stay alive until docking in France.

Genre: Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Stuart Urban

Producer: Bradley Adams , John Goldschmidt

Release Date (DVD): Jun 5, 2007

Runtime: 1h 32m

Sound Mix: Stereo

Cast & Crew

Kingsley Ofusu

David Suchet

Joss Ackland

Jean-Claude La Marre

Sean Pertwee

Henry Nartey

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Stuart Urban

Bradley Adams

John Goldschmidt

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Deadly Voyage

• Episode aired Jun 15, 1996

When stowaways are found on board a Russian cargo ship, some of the officers and crew decide to dispose of them at sea. The last time they had a stowaway on board, the ship was fined heavily... Read all When stowaways are found on board a Russian cargo ship, some of the officers and crew decide to dispose of them at sea. The last time they had a stowaway on board, the ship was fined heavily and black marks entered into their records, when he made it off the ship into a foreign p... Read all When stowaways are found on board a Russian cargo ship, some of the officers and crew decide to dispose of them at sea. The last time they had a stowaway on board, the ship was fined heavily and black marks entered into their records, when he made it off the ship into a foreign port.

• John Mackenzie
• Nick Davies
• Stuart Urban
• Joss Ackland
• Sean Pertwee
• 11 User reviews
• 2 Critic reviews
• 2 wins & 1 nomination

• (as Adewale)

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Did you know

• Trivia The story of Kingsley Ofosu who hails from Ghana, West Africa.

User reviews 11

• Dec 21, 2003
• June 15, 1996 (United States)
• United States
• Viaje mortal
• British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
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Deadly Voyage (1996)

Genre: drama / thriller, duration: 90 minuten, country: united states, directed by: john mackenzie, stars: omar epps , joss ackland and sean pertwee, imdb score: 6,6  (676), releasedate: 14 june 1996.

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Deadly Voyage plot

On the high seas, the crew of a Russian container ship discovers that there are nine African stowaways on board. When they are discovered, a number of crew members, led by sadistic officer Plesin and boatswain Romachenko, decide to get rid of the nine. Only Kingsley Ofusu survives the massacre and must fend off the murderous crew on the high seas. Based on a true story from 1992.

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Deadly Voyage (1996)

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter is Based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 Novel

Directed by André Øvredal, ‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’ is a fantasy horror film that marks the cinematic iteration of one of the more shadowed moments of Dracula’s story. In 1897 the Demeter vessel, a merchant ship, charts its path from Transylvania to London carrying cargo and crew. Helmed by Captain Elliot and his first mate Wojchek, the ship is populated with a handful of people, including stowaway Anna and Doctor Clemens. On the voyage, the crew faces unimaginable horror when they learn of a wicked presence between them: a deadly vampire known as Dracula.

The film depicts an epic tragedy in a fight for survival and delves into the origin of Dracula in a more innately monstrous light. Despite the film’s fantastical narrative heart, its period setting distinctly grounds the story in reality and imbues the world with a sense of realism. Due to the same, viewers must be curious about the inspiration behind this film and its roots in true historical events.

Demeter’s Story: From Stoker to Screen

‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’ is not based on a true story. The film is based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel ‘Dracula,’ chapter seven titled “The Captain’s Log.” Consequently, given ‘Dracula’s’ fictitious nature, the film, itself alongside the ship Demeter and its voyage, is also a work of fiction. The story behind the film’s production is almost as extensive as the material, with multiple directors and actors temporarily onboarding the project before parting ways with it. More than a decade in the making, the film finally found its footing with director André Øvredal with a screenplay by Bragi F. Schut and Zak Olkewicz.

Schut first got the idea for the story after befriending a model maker in Hollywood who showed him his portfolio, which contained miniatures from several movies, including Demeter from ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula,’ directed by Francis Ford Coppola . From there, Schut, who has always wanted to do a space horror film reminiscent of ‘Aliens,’ found his inspiration for an ‘Aliens’-type story that was an original idea. Setting his film in the past on a boat, Schut found his ideal horror setting plagued by one of the most infamous monsters in literature and cinema, Dracula himself. Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ has been adapted to the screen a number of times.

Even so, Schut found the ability to explore a facet of the character that many may find refreshing by focusing on Dracula’s story during Demeter’s voyage. Still, adapting a singular chapter into a feature-length movie came with its own complications. The writer discussed the same in an interview with Bloody Flicks and said, “I tried to construct the story so that it wouldn’t violate what was in the book,” said Schut. “There are these journal entries told from the perspective of the Captain, and I wanted to try to preserve those. But in expanding one tiny chapter into an entire movie, I also knew that I had to expand and invent a bunch of new material.”

As such, Schut carefully employed ample creative liberty whenever necessary while still remaining as accurate to the source material as possible. Similarly, the film’s utilization of special effects for constructing the building blocks of the film also imbues it with a timeless, realistic appeal. Lastly, Dracula’s character, who is at once the film’s antagonist and protagonist, centers the narrative, informing its crucial aspects. Over the years, audiences have gotten used to seeing several versions of Dracula that all have a few traits in common. However, this film takes a different approach and presents a distinctive yet authentic approach to his character.

“Our Dracula was not a classical, sexy guy, so for me, it was good to try something different, something heavier,” said actor Javier Botet, who embodies Dracula in the film. “It’s like a horror- action movie , so let’s make something new. We can make something beautiful. What’s so beautiful about discovering that is not only action— there’s a base of humanity or emotions in the creature. Does he start feeling weak, feeling alone, and now he needs to survive.”

Likewise, director Øvredal shared similar sentiments while discussing the process behind bringing his own iteration of Dracula to life while still staying true to Stoker’s vision. In a conversation with Screen Rant , the filmmaker said, “I was very preoccupied with making sure that we’ve never really seen this version because I try to strive for originality as much as I can. It’s so hard, but that has to be the aim and the goal always.” Therefore, the conclusion remains: ‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’ is not based on a true story. Instead, it’s only an adaptation of one of the most famous literary classics ‘Dracula.’

Read More: Best Dracula Movies and TV Shows

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Deadly Voyage

• Deadly voyage full movie

Deadly Voyage is a 1996 television film directed by John Mackenzie and written by Stuart Urban . Produced by Union Pictures and John Goldschmidt 's Viva Films for joint distribution to BBC Films and HBO Films, it tells the true story of Kingsley Ofosu , the sole survivor of a group of nine African stowaways discovered aboard the cargo ship MC Ruby in 1992 and subsequently murdered by that ship's crew.

Deadly voyage the kinglsey ofosu story

Aboard the cargo ship MC Ruby , docked in New York City, six stowaways burst from one of the containers being unloaded. They flee from the ship, but are apprehended by dock workers and the New York police. The MC Ruby 's Ukrainian crew watches the detention with some amusement, but the ship's captain and his first mate, Ion Plesin, are displeased, aware that the illegal immigrants will cost the shipping company hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. In response, company representative Andreas Vlachos arrives to oversee future operations and warn that the crew will be liable for any more such fines.

Later, the MC Ruby is docked in Ghana , where dock worker Kingsley Ofosu plans to some day stow away aboard a cargo ship to pursue a better life for himself and his pregnant wife in the United States. Upon winning a lottery , he decides that the time is right, as he can use the money to get on his feet upon his arrival. Ofosu, his brother and six other men slip aboard the MC Ruby and hide in its cargo holds. With the ship behind schedule, Plesin has only one hour to conduct a stowaway search prior to departure. The hasty endeavour fails to turn up Ofosu's group and the ship sails, bound for France, prior to sailing on to New York.

Ofosu's group encounters another stowaway, who had boarded the ship in Cameroon . The men jovially discuss the vocations they intend to pursue in the United States. Later, their water container breaks, forcing them to leave the cargo area to forage for water. They leave evidence of their presence, which the crew discovers. To prevent Vlachos from learning that the stowaway search had failed, the captain has Plesin assemble a small team to conduct a secret search.

The search finds the stowaways and Plesin discusses the predicament with the captain. Given the illegal immigrant fines, they cannot bring the stowaways into port. However, they also cannot alter course to drop the men off somewhere, as Vlachos would then find out about them. Plesin and his small search team hide the Africans in the ship's anchor hold without food or water. When they object, they find Plesin unsympathetic to their desire to escape poverty. He points out that if the stowaways' presence becomes known, he and his men will be fired, and any other jobs they can find in Ukraine will pay even less than the meager wages earned by Ofosu on the docks in Ghana . Yuri, one of Plesin's men, takes pity and secretly delivers them a little water, but he is powerless to do more. As the stowaways suffer, Ofosu laments that he has led the group to their deaths.

The captain acquiesces to Plesin's plan to kill the stowaways. Plesin's team takes the men from the hold in small groups. The team brings each group to another area, murders the men, and throws their bodies overboard. Yuri tries to stop the massacre, but the others overpower and subdue him. Ofosu and his brother are the last two to be brought out, but they surmise what is about to occur and make a run for it, heading in different directions. As they do, Plesin's team shoots Ofosu's brother, catches him and throws him overboard as Ofosu watches. Ofosu flees to the main cargo hold to hide and is able to elude further searches for him. While in the cargo hold, Ofosu stashes a picture of himself and his wife inside one of the cocoa sacks.

Plesin's men are concerned about their inability to locate the final stowaway, but they reason that all Western countries despise black immigrants and thus no one will be motivated to take action against them. They also expect to be able to secure him upon reaching port when he tries to exit the ship. However, once the ship docks, Ofosu is able to escape to shore and make it to the police before Plesin's men can catch him.

The next day, French authorities board the MC Ruby to investigate Ofosu's story. Plesin first denies that there had been any stowaway, but the authorities search the ship's hold and find Ofosu's picture in the cocoa sack. Plesin's final play is to acknowledge the killings but to suggest that he and his men had done France a favour by preventing undesirable blacks from entering the country illegally. The police are unimpressed by this rationale and immediately arrest Plesin and his men, along with the captain.

The film ends with Ofosu on the phone with his wife, hearing the cries of his newborn son, whom he pledges to name after his brother. An epilogue notes that the captain and first mate were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Three other crew members were also convicted and received 20-year sentences, while one crew member was acquitted. Kingsley Ofosu was living in France and hoping to have his wife and child join him.

• Omar Epps as Kingsley Ofosu
• Joss Ackland as the ship's captain
• Sean Pertwee as Ion Plesin
• David Suchet as Andreas Vlachos

(US) Peace Corps volunteers in Ghana were recruited as extras to play the ship's crew members, although many of these scenes do not appear in the final production.

When the trial of the crew members made international headlines, multiple film companies approached Ofosu to purchase the rights to his story. He eventually struck a deal with Union Pictures and Viva Films. The Union Pictures/Viva Films production was to be distributed to and financed by HBO and the BBC.

The screenplay for Deadly Voyage was written by Stuart Urban, who used interviews with Ofosu as his primary source material. Urban was also originally slated to direct, but when he took ill, John Mackenzie was brought in to replace him. The movie was filmed in England and in Ghana.

Producer John Goldschmidt noted that the Ghana portion of the shoot was particularly challenging, with weather that was extremely hot and humid and multiple crew members coming down with malaria or dysentery . There were also many logistical problems, as Ghana lacked an infrastructure conducive to executing principal photography for a major motion picture. Goldschmidt said that the original plan had been to film in South Africa, since that country was more "geared up for this sort of thing", being a location often used for major films set in Africa. However, the decision was made to film in Ghana for the sake of authenticity, and despite the difficulties, Goldschmidt felt that that genuineness shone through in the finished work.

Omar Epps, the film's star, spoke a bit more positively about his experience in Ghana. He said that he was able to spend a good deal of time with Ofosu in preparing for the role. Epps also said that he had learned to speak a little bit of Twi .

In 2006, Ofosu expressed doubt that he had received fair compensation from Union Pictures for the film. He said that he had received US$67,500, but that that sum had been based on an estimate of the film's total production costs, of which he was to receive 1.5%. Ofosu claimed he'd never been given an accounting of the final production costs to determine if he was owed more. He also said that he was to receive 10% of the movie's net profits and, but that he had never seen any payment along those lines. Union Pictures (which had gone bankrupt by that time) co-producer Bradley Adams pointed the finger at HBO and the BBC, saying that he also had never seen any accounting of profits or total budget figures from the two companies.

Newspaper reviews of Deadly Voyage were largely positive. Noting that its depictions of man's inhumanity to man were somewhat distressing to watch, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel labelled it an "effective film". The Daytona Beach News-Journal called it a "well-crafted drama" made all the more disturbing by the fact that observering Ofosu's true story was much like watching a fictional thriller film. The Kansas City Star branded it a "tough, provocative docudrama ".

The New York Times , however, was more critical, offering that the film was "not a great movie" and declaring that most of its characters were "little more than stick figures". Nonetheless, the paper did see the movie as "nightmarishly harrowing", calling it a "searing descent into human cruelty", and praising the performances of Epps and Pertwee as the film's primary protagonist and antagonist respectively.

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Fleet of massive cranes arrive at baltimore’s key bridge to begin clearing wreckage following deadly collapse.

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The first piece of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge was slated to be lifted out of the Patapsco River in Maryland on Saturday, following the arrival of a fleet of massive cranes, officials said.

“I’m really proud to announce that the governor said we’re going to conduct our first lift today on a piece of a portion of the bridge,” U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath said at a press conference on Saturday afternoon.

It is the first step toward reopening the Port of Baltimore following Tuesday’s deadly bridge collapse caused by the Singapore-based Dali tanker, which lost power shortly after leaving the Port of Baltimore. Six  construction workers repairing potholes  on the thoroughfare were killed in the disaster.

Reopening the port remains the “number one priority,” Gilreath said.

Divers are evaluating how portions of the bridge can be cut up for future lifts.

“We’re going to move as fast as possible,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore told the gathered reporters.

“We are going to ensure the safety of our first responders and we are not going to compromise one for the other.”

“Our economy depends on the Port of Baltimore and the Port of Baltimore depends on vessel traffic,” he added.

The Chesapeake 1000 crane barge, which can lift 1,000 tons and is the largest of its kind on the Eastern Seaboard, arrived Friday morning.

The vessel was built in 1972 by the CIA to recover a 3,000-ton Soviet Golf II ballistic missile submarine that sank in 1968, according to the US Naval Institute.

It was joined by the Ferrell, a 200-ton lift capacity revolving crane barge, and the Oyster Bay, a 150-ton lift capacity crane barge, all contracted by the US Navy .

Over the next five days, seven more cranes, 10 tugs and nine barges will arrive at the site to remove the debris and the ship, according to the agencies handling the response.

The broken pieces of the bridge sitting on the bow of the 213-million-pound Dali — which is nearly as long as the Eiffel Tower — weigh as much as 4,000 tons.

A section of the span pushed the bow of the ship to the harbor’s bottom, Transportation Secretary Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said at a briefing earlier this week.

President Biden on Friday said he plans to visit the site of the devastation this coming week though a specific date was not clear.

He confirmed his trip to reporters following a star-studded fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall with former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton on Thursday. 

It could take several more weeks for enough debris to be cleared to reopen the crucial port and it is unclear how long it will take to replace the bridge, officials said.

Experts say the Key Bridge, which was designed in the 1970s, did not have a warning system or fenders, both of which have become standard in more recent decades.

Fenders can ease the blow of any impacts, Politico reported, and warning systems can stop traffic or at least warn motorists.

“Protective systems are not just a good idea, they should be mandatory,” Roberto Leon, a professor of structural engineering and materials at Virginia Tech, told the outlet.

Police happened to be stationed near the bridge and stopped traffic once the Dali’s mayday call came through , otherwise the death toll could have been much higher.

“We will, moving forward, look at any and all options,” said Moore when asked about implementing a warning system.

“There’s nothing I will not do to make sure the people in my state are safe.”

Crews were still assessing the damage and monitoring for oil spills as of Friday, according to reports.

The tanker had 764 tons of hazardous materials aboard , including corrosives, flammables and lithium ion batteries, some of which were dumped into the harbor.

Footage released by the National Transportation Safety Board showed hazardous material investigators and engineers aboard the Dali on Thursday, surveying the extensive damage aboard the ship and downloading the vessel’s voyage data.

The cause of the ship’s power outage, which ultimately led to the crash, is still under investigation but one factor being considered is fuel contamination.

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Experts told NBC News it is an “open secret” that fuel contamination issues plague the shipping industry, but they often occur at sea where they can be managed without incident.

The Dali cargo ship had not stopped for fuel since Feb. 20, according to analysis by NBC.

It stopped twice in China and then in South Korea and although contamination has not been reported out of either country, there is no sign of the vessel stopping again to refuel along its journey through the Panama Canal, New York, Virginia and Baltimore.

The Dali would have needed more fuel to make it to Sri Lanka, where it was headed next, according to experts.

The ship could have been running on fuel from the bottom of its tank, where heavier contaminants settle, when the power went out, Jonathan Arneault, the CEO of FuelTrust, told NBC.

“The smell of burned fuel was everywhere in the engine room and it was pitch black,” one officer aboard the ship said.

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