Rhapsody on the Outlaw Ocean (London Breeze Film Festival UK Premiere + Q&A)

Rhapsody on the Outlaw Ocean (USA 61 min) Dir. Ian Urbina

And now for something completely different! As part of our IMPACT day, London Breeze is thrilled to present the UK premiere of writer director, Ian Urbina, and composer William Segal’s animated musical rap documentary exposing the lawless world of international waters, drawn from ten years of reporting and featuring vocal talent from Broadway’s Hamilton, including Sydney James Harcourt and Brandon Victor Dixon.

The film offers a rare window into an unseen world as well as one journalist’s attempt to find new ways to chronicle a place that feels too foreign, too hard to believe, to be captured through traditional means.

For over ten years, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Ian Urbina, embarked on a journey to uncover the hidden truths of what happens on the high seas. Over 50 million people work offshore in a realm without governments, police or oversight. What he found was a hidden world. On the outlaw ocean, bad actors take advantage for their own gain, and good actors exploit legal loopholes to achieve what could never be done on land. The reporting behind these stories is stunning and important. Stowaways left out to die at sea. Vigilantes chasing an illegal fishing ship. A man recalling the trauma of being enslaved on a ship. Crimes against human rights, crimes against the environment — made possible through the void of government on the water that covers two thirds of the planet.

In Rhapsody on the Outlaw Ocean, these true and harrowing stories are rendered into an animated musical rap documentary, as we follow the path of the Journalist as he traverses the high seas by ship from Antarctica to the South China Sea to the North Atlantic and beyond, uncovering the unbelievable stories of the people who work on the world’s oceans.

+ Iridescence (FRA 4 min) Dir. Adrien Lhoste 

A single drop of water is carried inside a bottle by a drone. It travels across a scorching, futuristic desert world where each place becomes increasingly dangerous. Along the way, it narrowly escapes a man with a net, a boxing kangaroo, and giant jellyfish… until it finally finds itself in the middle of a billionaire’s party.