First Cow 2019

In the present day, a woman strolling along the riverside with her dog uncovers a haunting scene: two skeletons lying together in a shallow grave, a stark clue from the past that hangs over the story like a whisper of fate.

In 1820, Otis “Cookie” Figowitz, a quiet chef, [John Magaro] travels through the rugged expanses of Oregon Country with a noisy, rough caravan of fur trappers who tease and bully him for not turning up enough food. One night, he encounters King-Lu, a Chinese immigrant on the run after killing a Russian man, and [Orion Lee] hides with him in a tent. The next day, Lu slips away across the river, leaving Cookie with a taste of danger and possibility.

When the troupe reaches a frontier fort, Lu finds Cookie once more—this time amidst a chaotic bar fight where an infant is left unattended—and invites him into his house. Cookie moves in, and a quiet partnership forms as Lu dreams aloud about starting a farm while Cookie imagines a future bakery or a hotel in San Francisco. Their bond grows as they barter ideas and skills, balancing Cookie’s culinary craft with Lu’s stubborn practicality.

At the same time, the outpost receives its first milk cow. Her mate and calf perished en route, and she is left unattended just outside the home of the wealthiest English trader in town, the Chief Factor, played by [Toby Jones]. Lu laments that fortunes rarely favor the honest poor, suggesting that one must either seize luck or commit a crime to rise. Cookie, recalling his days as a baker’s assistant in Boston, proposes using the cow’s milk to create something new. They slip onto the Chief Factor’s land at night, Cookie milking the cow while Lu keeps watch from a tree. They extract enough milk to bake a batch of buttermilk biscuits, and Cookie longs for something sweeter, a longing Lu meets with a wily smile, proposing that their goods could yield a true fortune once refined with honey.

Their first batch of sweet, oily cakes hits the market with a rush. When asked for the recipe, Lu coyly claims it’s a “Chinese secret.” The tasters flood in, the line grows longer, and a bidding war erupts for the last crumb. Word spreads quickly, and the outpost crowds grow ravenous for these strange, delicious treats. As their riches begin to mount, the two men decide it’s safer to stash their money in a tree rather than carry it to a bank, a decision born of necessity and caution.

The Chief Factor, intrigued by their success, asks Cookie to bake a clafoutis—his idea to impress a captain at a forthcoming meeting. Cookie and Lu deliver with pride, and the Chief Factor offers tea with cream to the captain as they observe the scene: the cow, though well-bred, still produces little milk. The party is brought to see the cow, who recognizes Cookie with a nuzzle of familiarity. Sensing trouble on the horizon, Cookie urges Lu to leave town, but Lu believes they lack enough means to reach San Francisco and persuades him to return for another night of milking.

A perilous turn arrives when a man comes to fetch a cat from the Chief Factor’s estate, and a branch snaps beneath Cookie’s feet as Lu issues a warning call. The alarm erupts, and the Chief Factor’s men close in with deadly intent. Lu leaps into the river to escape, while Cookie hides, then tumbles down a hill and strikes his head. He awakens later in a shack, tended to by an elderly Native Hawaiian couple, and declares that he must find his friend before it’s too late.

Desperate to reunite, Lu sells his buttons to hire a canoe and travels downstream toward the shack, returning to hide from the Chief Factor’s men who search through the wreckage. He retrieves their money from the tree and finds Cookie again at the shack, where the pair share a fragile euphoria shadowed by the looming threat. Cookie passes the cow’s fenced yard on the estate, and Lu, who had once ignored a slight man in line at the market, spots him with a rifle in hand, closing in on their precarious world.

With dawn still distant, Cookie locates Lu at the shack, and Lu proposes they try to catch the next boat south. But Cookie is weakened by fatigue, slipping toward exhaustion as Lu stays by him, promising safety and watching over him as they drift toward an uncertain future, finally closing their eyes together.

Alongside the stark present-day mystery, the film is threaded with memories and encounters from the frontier—moments of hunger, ingenuity, risk, and loyalty that bind Cookie and Lu in a fragile alliance. The tale unfolds as a restrained meditation on friendship, desire, and the fragile line between luck and crime, painted across a landscape both brutal and beautiful. In the end, the two men’ s shared hunger for a better life—whether through a bakery, a farm, or something entirely new—lingers, inviting viewers to consider what it means to find fortune in a world that often grants it to the bold, the cunning, or the incredibly hungry. The past and present linger in tension, like the bite of honey and the ache of longing, until the last moment when two lives, transformed by shared choice, hang in a quiet, hopeful balance.