STYX
Alone on a solo boating trip in the middle of a vast and tempestuous sea, a German emergency doctor unexpectedly finds herself faced with a devastating life-or-death dilemma.
Setting off on a solo sailing expedition to a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean, emergency doctor Rike (Susanne Wolff) has good reason to believe that she’ll enjoy a break from worrying about the suffering of others. This holds true at first, and the start of director Wolfgang Fischer’s taut, unsparing drama observes Rike as she takes in the sun, reads up on Darwin, and expertly navigates the yacht across stretches of sea with nary another human in sight. But before long, the outside world intrudes upon Rike’s solitary idyll in horrifying fashion. Torn between the stern warnings of the coast guard and her own tormented conscience, she must grapple with an almost inconceivable moral quandary in which many lives hang in the balance. Carrying nearly the entire film with minimal dialogue, Wolff is never less than transfixing, capturing both her character’s stoicism and mounting desperation. Yet one could argue that the true star of this riveting drama is the sea, which director Fischer endows with a steely beauty that’s at once majestic and terrible. Against this elemental backdrop, Fischer has crafted a film of profound moral crises that feel both eternal and sadly topical.
CAST: Susanne Wolff, Gedion Oduor Wekesa
In Competition: Best Narrative Feature
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