Turning Tide

A dream comes true for skipper Yann Kermadec ("The Intouchables"-Star François Cluzet) when he is allowed to take part in the “Vendée Globe”, the toughest single-handed sailing regatta in the world, as a newcomer. His yacht shoots through the wave troughs as fast as an arrow and is in first place, but a defective rudder blade at the height of Morocco throws a spanner in the works for the Breton. When Yann discovers the Mauritanian Mano (Samy Seghir) as a stowaway on board shortly afterwards, the chance of victory seems more than just a distant prospect. With a secret passenger, whom Yann tries in vain several times to bring ashore, he would even be disqualified. So Yann conceals the young migrant during video calls with his partner Marie (Virginie Efira) and her brother, his patron and sporting friend Franck (Guillaume Canet), for whom Yann had stood in shortly before the start... The immense size of the sea can hardly be captured more directly and stirringly: You can sense that debutant director Christophe Offenstein is an experienced cameraman in almost every spray-splashing shot of “Turning Tide”. And yet the sailing trip around the world offers much more than exciting water sports on the open sea. Rather, in the midst of the discrepancy between poverty-stricken migration and a sinfully expensive high-tech hobby, Offenstein has made a film about humanity, responsibility and closeness, with which he won the Audience Award at the Gijón Film Festival. “The spray almost sprays out of the screen.” (www.cinema.de) “The story of deception at sea works so well because it is based on a solid and realistic foundation: The viewer has the impression of being right in front of the swells that drive Cluzet, of brushing against the icebergs that line the path of his monohull, of experiencing at first hand the adrenaline rushes, the dejection and the scruples that the sailor feels in this race that he experiences from the inside, sometimes as a nightmare and sometimes as a victory over the elements.” (Le Parisien)