The Son and the Sea

Sunday, September 7: This screening will be presented with open captions. An ASL interpreter will be present for the live onstage components.

Thursday, September 11: This screening will be presented with open captions. An ASL interpreter will be present for the live onstage components.

Press & Industry Screening, Friday, September 5: This film will be presented with open captions, but please note, ASL interpretation will not be available for the live onstage elements of the screening.

In her arresting feature debut, Stroma Cairns captures young masculinity with nuance, empathy, and startling insight. Living an extended adolescence of parties and poor decisions, London-based Jonah (Jonah West) is beginning to feel unmoored. Secretly yearning for a reprieve from the city’s frantic energy and his hard-partying lifestyle, he convinces his best friend Lee (Stanley Brock) to join him on a trip to the Scottish coast to visit his great-aunt, whose memory is fading.

While staying in her small home tucked along the rugged shoreline, the pair meet Charlie (Connor Tompkins), a Deaf man grappling with the fallout from his twin brother’s misdeeds. What begins as a chance encounter at the local pub slowly becomes something deeper, as the three young men form an initially tentative connection that opens the possibility for change.

While cinema can often foreground the brutality of young men, Cairns turns her camera toward its emotional undercurrents — the intimacy, fragility, and vulnerability that often go unspoken or unseen. Her characters are at a crossroads, stumbling into self-awareness and learning, however awkwardly, how to show up for each other even as the spectre of waywardness looms.

With rich cinematography and beautifully understated performances, The Son and the Sea avoids moralizing or melodrama. Instead, Cairns lets the story unfold with a quiet authenticity, finding wonder in unlikely places.

JASON RYLE