Styx

A doctor faces an impossible moral dilemma at sea. In an attempt to escape her stressful doctor as a first responder, the doctor embarks upon a sailing trip starting out from Gibraltar. What should have been a relaxing retreat soon becomes a horrifying clash with reality, when she meets a ship full of desperate refugees. An impossible choice forms as it becomes clear that she is the only one who can save the people on board the ship, but her boat isn’t nearly big enough for all those in need.

Styx joins a certain tradition of single-location films. In this case it is the sailboat of the protagonist (wonderfully played by Susanne Wolff!), who, completely without any dialogue, has to handle a situation as it gradually becomes more intense. This is a film of pure action; we see Wolff react and act in accordance with the development of the situations unfolding all around her. In the first half of the film, a lot of the internal tension comes from looking at an extremely competent person doing something so expertly.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, many have pointed to the similarities between Styx and Robert Redford’s All Is Lost – but any such similarities are purely superficial. The film goes through a shift of gear when Wollf’s doctor is forced to look the enormous, ongoing humanitarian crisis of the refugees dead in the eye, becoming all to well acquainted with something most of us are fortunate enough to only read about in the news.

Wolfgang Fischer (b. 1970) is an Austrian filmmaker. He studied psychology and painting, moving on to film and video studies at the Dusseldorf Art Academy and film studies at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. Styx is his second feature film, and received much critical praise after it premiered in the Berlin film festival this winter.