Robinson is a submarine captain, and the sea calls him at the expense of all else: his nearly 30 years of voyages have cost him the love of his wife Chrissy and child. When the salvage company for whom he has toiled over 11 years abruptly lays him off, this working-class ex-Navy man finds himself adrift. But after hearing the tale of a German U-boat full of WWII-era gold sitting on a bed in the Georgian depths of the Black Sea, the captain feels he can prove himself anew. He gets hold of a vintage Russian diesel submarine and puts together a crew of roughnecks; in no time, they'll get a taste of much more danger than they bargained for. "I wanted to make a film about the terror of being trapped underwater - and I felt that there's a general fear attributed to submarines because of the inherent claustrophobia. I also gave thought to how the people who do sail them become a family. They can get so used to being with each other within the confines of a submarine that when they get off of it they are quite dysfunctional people. There are people who are happier at sea, happier in this tin can, because they understand it and they understand the world that's around them - whereas in the real world, they are lost. That became an inspiration for the characters here." [Kevin Macdonald]

Kevin Macdonald (1967, Glasgow) won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for One Day in September in 2000. His 2003 feature Touching the Void became the highest-grossing British documentary in U.K. box office history, and also won the Evening Standard and BAFTA Awards for Best British Film. His first non-documentary feature was The Last King of Scotland; Forest Whitaker's performance as Idi Amin earned the actor the BAFTA and Academy Awards for Best Actor, among other honors, including a Special Mention at Courmayeur. Macdonald next directed the Washington-set thriller State of Play, starring Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck; the Roman epic adventure The Eagle (2011), and the post-nuclear disaster drama How I Live Now (2013). Between 2011 and 2013, Macdonald contributed to Ridley and Tony Scott's project Life in a Day, directed Marley, and also made Christmas in a Day (Scott Free Productions).