Canadian documentary film festival Hot Docs (29 April – 9 May 2021) will world premiere Lucia Kašová’s feature debut The Sailor within the World Showcase.
Documentary film The Sailor observes an eighty-year-old Paul Earling Johnson who sailed the world his whole life. He loved, drank and lived foolishly, never truly living on land. Now he is turning eighty. Both him and his boat are unfit to sail. He drinks a liter of vodka a day and contemplates life and death. What is at the end of such a journey? Is there loneliness? What is the relationship between freedom and selfishness? Does fulfilling a dream always have a bitter end?
„I am a sailor. I have sailed the Atlantic Ocean. When I arrived at the island of Martinique after 35 days on sea, I knew right there and then. I am ready to sail again. I want to spend my whole life at sea. Sailors talk about the sea as if it were a person, a woman actually, a very wise one, who is trying to teach us, to communicate with us. In time, I met people who talk as well as live with her, people calling themselves “Sea gypsies”. Their boats don’t have a flag of their home country, because the sea represents their nationality, their religion, their home. They have been sailing for decades and when they talk, one can hear the rhythm of the waves in their voice. Then I met Johnson. I met him at the door of a small supermarket in Harvey Vale Bay on Carriacou Island. We looked at each other and we knew that we are of the same kind.“ said the director.
Slovak and co-production documentaries at the Hot Docs festival (e.g.):
The White World According to Daliborek (d. Vít Klusák, 2017), Sunrise Hotel (d. Mária Rumanová, 2016), Velvet Terrorists (d. Pavol Pekarčík, Ivan Ostrochovský, Peter Kerekes, 2013), New Life of Family Album (d. Adam Oľha, 2012), Matchmaking Mayor (d. Erika Hníková, 2010), Osadné (d. Marko Škop, 2009), War Games and the Man Who Stopped Them (d. Dariusz Jabłoński, 2009), Cooking History (d. Peter Kerekes, 2008), Other Worlds (d. Marko Škop, 2006), as well as short student films Arsy-versy (d. Miro Remo, 2009) and Soňa and Her Family (d. Daniela Rusnoková, 2006).
Related articles:
2014: Slovak films travel in April
2013: Slovak films at April festivals
