Set against the refugee crisis, a woman’s solo sailing journey turns into a deadly serious ethical dilemma in this unusual and taut political allegory.
When Rike (Susanne Wolff) becomes the only person to come to the aid of a group of refugees shipwrecked on the high seas, she is shown the limits of her importance and of the empathy of her cultural milieu. She is left slipping impotently from one nightmare to the next, and by the end she is forced to recognize that there is no way to counter the cruelties of real life. Only chance can save her.
The film was initially screened as part of the Panorama section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival and more recently at the BFI London Film Festival in 2018.
Austria, 2018, 93 min, directed by Wolfgang Fischer