In an award-winning performance (Best Actor- Venice Film Festival), Vincent Gallo plays Mohammed, a Taliban fighter captured by the US military in Afghanistan after a violent desert attack goes awry. While being transported to a secret detention center in Europe, the vehicle crashes and he suddenly finds himself free. But his newfound freedom quickly disappears as he is relentlessly pursued in a snow-blanketed forest by an army that does not "officially" exist. A critically-acclaimed, thinking man's action thriller, ESSENTIAL KILLING tells the story of one man's struggle for survival, where morality has no place as he confronts the necessity to kill in order to survive.