Film Forum

Reimagine Robert Redford’s adventure in ALL IS LOST with a young woman sailor, a M.D. who intends to fulfill her dream by setting sail alone to a remote island in the Atlantic. She – and her well-equipped, state-of-the-art sailboat – seem ready for anything. But following a violent storm, she finds herself approaching an endangered vessel, overloaded with refugees. Maritime law (report the emergency; then split) conflicts with her Hippocratic oath and her every instinct to help save a boatload of desperate people. “Filmmaking as crisp and slicing as a sea breeze…(an adventure film) with a spinning moral compass and a topical dimension that proves even more gripping than its brilliantly achieved visceral action.” – Jessica Kiang, Variety

Presented with support from the Goethe-Institut.

GERMANY/AUSTRIA    2018   94 MINS   IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES  FILM MOVEMENT

Reviews

“A taut moral thriller… It’s a dream journey that will slam into the refugee crisis. One woman’s fierce dream can look like someone else’s worst nightmare… The movie shifts into the visual and auditory minimalism that defines its alluring, almost hypnotically soothing first third… It’s a headily seductive landscape painted in every conceivable shade of blue and daubed with white. Like Rike, you settle into the luxurious peacefulness… In short order, the larger world crashes in, and a story of radical, deeply privileged individualism gives way to a potent mess and sometimes uncomfortable parable about what human beings owe one another.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“A blunt, breathless, and astonishingly unsentimental morality play that is told with the intensity of a ticking-clock thriller. Every bit as ominous as its title suggests.”
– David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“Minimalist filmmaking executed in superbly sharp fashion… (featuring) Susanne Wolff’s dynamically subtle performance.”
– Jonathan Christian, The Playlist

“Watching this one-woman-show of intense physical prowess is so absorbing that it’s a double shock when she happens upon an overloaded refugee boat and the film’s sails are suddenly fat with intractable dilemma. This is ALL IS LOST with a spinning moral compass and a topical dimension that proves even more gripping than its brilliantly achieved visceral action... In only his second feature, Fischer, abetted by a rivetingly capable performance from [Susanne] Wolff, evokes these classical allusions in a scintillatingly modern, provocative way, pulling his clever narrative taut through the cleats, and ratcheting the human stakes high as the implacable blue sky.”
– Jessica Kiang, Variety