Set during the Jacobite Rising of 1745, The Cartographer follows Agnes Drummond, 26, a Scottish woman who has been training under her cartographer father her entire life and who, at his sudden death, assumes his commission from the British government to complete the mapping of the Scottish Highlands. The assignment is both an extraordinary opportunity and a trap — Agnes must map a terrain that Jacobite forces are using for military movement, which makes her work intelligence as much as geography, which makes her position dangerous. Her guide through the Highlands is Alasdair Mòr — a man whose three actual roles (Jacobite intelligence, British double agent, and person trying to survive the war) she learns about one at a time across the film. The romance between them is built on shared physical endurance and mutual discovery, against the backdrop of a landscape being torn apart by a dynastic war.
