Direction: Wolfgang Fischer
Country: Germany / Austria
In Greek mythology, Styx is a deity and a river that forms the boundary between Earth and the Underworld. You won’t find a deity or a river in Austrian Wolfgang Fischer’s sophomore film, but the immense sea and an unforgettable, shocking discovery that will forever mark the life of an adventurous woman sailor.
The experienced, hands-on 40-year-old doctor Rike (Susanne Wolff) resolves to abandon the stress of emergency medical night shifts in Gibraltar to embark on a solo sailing trip to the small tropical island of Ascension. She learned about the place's artificial jungle from a book by Charles Darwin. Expecting to find some sort of paradise on Earth, it’s hell that appears in front of her, not due to a storm that after a certain time shook her yacht with violence, but when she faces the sad reality of a fishing boat overloaded with dehydrated, famished, and sick African refugees. Several attempts to ask for help were made via radio and all she got was a voice saying: “back up and don’t intervene”. That’s when Rike envisions a risky scheme to force the authorities to get involved and do their job.
The monstrosity of letting debilitated people dying in the sea is disgusting. This is just an episode amidst many that show the cruelty of the world we’re living in. Should some lives matter more than others?
Fischer puts you right in the middle of the action, infusing tension and anguish with a story that demonstrates the complacency of developed countries in the face of painful realities lived by human beings in other parts of the world.
The film has been compared to J.C. Chandor’s All is Lost, yet Rike felt powerless and helpless rather than really lost at sea and with her life in danger. The ending didn’t exceed expectations, but this was a piercingly realistic cinematic experience based on an outrageous true story.
