Styx
A woman’s solo sailing journey turns into a deadly serious ethical dilemma in this unusual and taut political allegory.
Rike – a 40-year-old doctor from Europe – embodies a typical Western model of happiness and success. She is educated, confident, determined and committed. We see Rike’s everyday life, as an emergency doctor, before she fulfils a long-held dream and sails out to sea alone in her sailing boat. Her goal: Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean. But her dream holiday is quickly broken off on the high seas, when, after a storm, she finds herself near a stricken fishing boat. Around a hundred people are about to drown. Rike follows maritime law and radios for help. As her request is going nowhere, she is forced to make a fatal decision.
Wolfgang Fischer’s film depicts a struggle for survival at sea which makes palpable the cruelty of the situation for people in dire straits whose fate is determined by others. The ocean becomes the scene of an allegorical, existential drama.