LUKE LORENTZEN | USA | 2026 | 95 MIN | ENGLISH
Witness the indelible beauty of skilled craftsmanship on a picturesque outcrop of New England and visit the lives and struggles of the laborers and artisans who build the finest ships on the sea in this engrossing documentary.
Over the course of more than a year of work, Boatbuilders follows the construction of a single yacht from conception and design all the way to first sail. For Brooklin Boat Yard, each project presents an existential risk: to commit all your resources and manpower to building a 56-foot sailboat worth millions of dollars. Costs are endlessly rising, and the clientele has steadily escalated to only the wealthiest. Perfection has become a requirement. But these workers are unparalleled in their craft, as is elegantly captured in the verité filmmaking of director-editor-cinematographer Luke Lorentzen. The boatyard and the lives of the workers in this tiny hamlet are delicately and beautifully framed as the film passes through all four seasons and we witness the trials and tribulations of building such a vessel. Lorentzen’s careful eye also captures the deep complexities of this work, as labor, art, craft, economy, and sociology collide, highlighting the rigor that is required by the working class to provide the comforts of the rich. The waves rock between stability and passion, tradition and opportunity, work and family. Even so, they beat on, boatbuilders against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
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