Films About the Sea to Watch

The sea, in cinema, is a two-faced creature. It is the glittering expanse of mainstream adventure, the spectacular backdrop for big-budget blockbusters that have defined our imagination, from Titanic to Jaws. It is the stage for epics, discovery, and large-scale danger.

But far from the trade routes, the sea sheds its romanticism to become a mirror of the soul. It becomes a character, an antagonist, a primordial deity. It is a psychological canvas on which directors paint the darkest recesses of the human condition: loneliness, madness, grief, the brutal struggle for survival.

This guide is a journey across both faces of the sea. It is a path that unites the great epic adventures with the most intimate independent works. Its indifferent vastness becomes the catalyst that pushes characters beyond their limits, its surface a thin veil separating the real from the nightmare. It is a liminal space where myths re-emerge from the abyss and the raw reality of life manifests with an almost unbearable poetry.

The Lighthouse (2019)

On a remote New England island in the late 19th century, two lighthouse keepers, the veteran Thomas Wake and the rookie Ephraim Winslow, must coexist for four weeks. Isolation, alcohol, and a relentless storm push them into a spiral of paranoia and madness, where myth and reality merge into a Lovecraftian nightmare.

Robert Eggers doesn’t just tell a story of isolation; he sculpts an oppressive sensory experience. Shot in grainy, claustrophobic black and white, with an almost square aspect ratio that traps the characters and the viewer, the film uses the sea as a constant acoustic assault. The deafening sound of the foghorn, the incessant crash of waves against the rocks, the howling wind: the ocean is an invisible monster besieging the two men’s psyches. The saltwater permeates everything, from their skin to their dreams, becoming the catalyst for a Freudian delirium in which unspeakable secrets and repressed desires emerge. The lighthouse, with its forbidden and enchanting light, becomes a phallic symbol of knowledge and power, a secret the sea jealously guards.

All is Lost (2013)

A man, on a solo journey across the Indian Ocean, wakes to find his sailboat has sprung a leak after a collision with a drifting shipping container. With his radio and navigation equipment out of commission, he must face a violent storm and fight for survival against the elements, armed only with his ingenuity and tenacity.

J.C. Chandor’s masterpiece is an exercise in radical minimalism. With a monumental and almost completely silent Robert Redford, the film strips the survival genre of all dialogue and backstory, reducing it to its essence: the pure struggle between man and nature. Here, the sea is the absolute antagonist. It is not malevolent, but powerfully, terribly indifferent. Every wave, every storm, every dead calm is an existential test. The near-total absence of words transforms the film into a work of pure cinema, a silent ballet of precise and desperate gestures. It is a heartbreaking affirmation of human resilience in the face of a force that can be neither understood nor defeated, only endured.

Manchester by the Sea (2016)

Lee Chandler, a solitary and taciturn handyman in Boston, is forced to return to his coastal Massachusetts hometown after the sudden death of his brother. There, he discovers he has been named the legal guardian of his teenage nephew, a return that forces him to confront a tragic past that has alienated him from his family and community.

In Kenneth Lonergan’s film, the sea is not a symbol of freedom, but a prison of ice and memory. The New England coast, gray, cold, and windswept, is the protagonist’s emotional landscape. His past is inextricably linked to the water, and every view of the ocean, every sound of a fishing boat, is a constant and painful reminder of the tragedy that destroyed his life. The sea here offers no catharsis or purification; it is an oppressive and immutable presence, just like Lee’s pain, an immense expanse of grief from which it is impossible to escape.

Stromboli, Terra di Dio (1950)

To escape an Italian internment camp after World War II, Lithuanian refugee Karin marries a fisherman and follows him to his native island, Stromboli. There, she clashes with the harshness of life, the distrust of the traditionalist community, and the wild, threatening nature of the active volcano, finding herself in a new form of imprisonment.

Roberto Rossellini, a pioneer of neorealism, uses the landscape as a fundamental character. The island of Stromboli is a brutal microcosm, dominated by two primordial forces: the sea and the volcano. For Karin, the sea is not an escape route but a liquid wall that isolates her from the world, trapping her in a culture she does not understand and that does not accept her. The volcano, with its unpredictable eruptions, becomes the physical manifestation of her anguish and repressed anger. Her desperate final climb up the mountain is not just an escape attempt, but a confrontation with the existential forces that govern her life, a search for grace in a merciless world.

Archipelago (2010)

A family gathers for a farewell holiday on one of the remote Isles of Scilly, off the coast of Cornwall, before their son Edward leaves for a year of volunteer work in Africa. The idyllic landscape soon becomes the stage for long-simmering tensions, passive-aggressive resentments, and a profound inability to communicate.

The title of Joanna Hogg’s film is its central metaphor. The members of this bourgeois family are like the islands of an archipelago: close but irredeemably separated by invisible and cold currents of misunderstanding. Hogg uses an austere style, with fixed, distant shots and the absence of a soundtrack, to accentuate the characters’ emotional isolation. The seascape, with its windswept beaches and changing skies, offers no comfort but reflects their inner desolation. They are physically together in a place of extraordinary beauty, but psychologically adrift, each stuck on their own island of selfishness and pain.

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1976)

Widow Anne Osborne begins a relationship with Ryuji, a merchant marine officer. Her thirteen-year-old son, Noboru, initially idolizes the sailor, seeing him as the embodiment of a heroic ideal. However, when Ryuji decides to leave the sea to marry Anne and lead a bourgeois life, Noboru and his gang of nihilistic friends consider it an unforgivable betrayal that demands a terrible punishment.

Adapted from the novel by Yukio Mishima, this unsettling film explores the sea as a philosophical concept, a symbol of purity, glory, and masculine destiny. For Noboru, the sea is an absolute realm, and the sailor is its hero, a superior being untainted by the mediocrity of life on land. Ryuji’s decision to “come ashore” is a literal fall from grace, an abandonment of the ideal for the corruption of routine and domesticity. The sea here is not a physical place, but a state of being, a romantic and deadly ideal that cannot survive contact with the mainland.

Enys Men (2022)

Set in 1973, the film follows a volunteer living alone on an uninhabited island off the Cornish coast. Her task is to observe a rare flower. Her methodical routine begins to crumble as reality merges with spectral visions of the island’s past, including miners, young women, and a mysterious stone monolith.

Mark Jenkin, after Bait, delves even deeper into Cornish “folk horror.” Enys Men (which means “stone island” in Cornish) is a hypnotic and disorienting work. The sea is the force that isolates this place, making it a container where time does not flow linearly but is layered. The island is haunted not by ghosts, but by memory itself, and the sea is the keeper of these traumatic stories. Jenkin’s style, with its jagged editing and use of 16mm film with saturated colors, reflects the fragmentation of the protagonist’s psyche, who becomes one with the island and its unsettling marine legends.

Sea Fever (2019)

Siobhán, a brilliant but solitary marine biology student, joins the crew of an Irish fishing trawler for fieldwork. The superstitious crew sees her as a bad omen. When the boat is immobilized by an unknown bioluminescent creature and a mysterious parasite begins to infect the crew, Siobhán’s scientific rationality clashes with the instinct for survival.

This Irish thriller brilliantly subverts the clichés of aquatic horror. The monster is not a ravenous creature, but an incomprehensible organism, and the horror derives not so much from the physical threat as from the biological mystery and the paranoia of contagion. The Atlantic Ocean is depicted as a primordial abyss, a “broth” from which alien and inconceivable life forms can emerge. The film becomes a tense allegory about quarantine and collective responsibility, where the real monster is the fear of the unknown and the difficult choice between self-preservation and protecting the outside world.

The Wicker Man (1973)

Police Sergeant Neil Howie, a devout Christian, travels to the remote Hebridean island of Summerisle to investigate a girl’s disappearance. He discovers that the islanders, led by the charismatic Lord Summerisle, have abandoned Christianity to practice a form of Celtic paganism. His investigation turns into a deadly clash between two irreconcilable faiths.

A foundational masterpiece of the folk horror genre, The Wicker Man uses the sea as an essential element of its narrative. The ocean is the physical and cultural barrier that has allowed Summerisle to remain isolated, a social laboratory where an ancient religion could thrive far from the laws and morals of the mainland. Howie’s seaplane journey is not just a geographical displacement, but a passage into another world, a realm where his authority and faith have no value. The film’s horror arises from this cultural clash, made possible only by the deep isolation guaranteed by the sea.

Triangle (2009)

Jess, a young mother, joins a group of friends for a sailing trip. When a strange storm capsizes their boat, they find refuge on a seemingly deserted ocean liner. Onboard, Jess has a bewildering sense of déjà vu and soon realizes she is trapped in a murderous time loop, forced to relive the same terrifying events over and over again.

Christopher Smith builds a psychological thriller that transforms the ocean into a purgatorial limbo. The ocean liner Aeolus is not just a ghost ship, but a stage for an infernal cycle inspired by the myth of Sisyphus, where the protagonist is condemned to repeat an act of violence indefinitely to atone for a past sin. The boundless, empty ocean surrounding the ship reinforces the feeling of being trapped outside of conventional time and space, making the sea a key element of her eternal punishment.

Dead Calm (1989)

After the tragic death of their son, John and Rae Ingram retreat to their sailboat for a long Pacific voyage. Their solitude is interrupted when they rescue a man, Hughie, the sole survivor of a drifting schooner. They soon discover that Hughie is a homicidal psychopath, and what was meant to be a convalescence turns into a terrifying fight for survival on the open sea.

Phillip Noyce’s thriller is a masterful study of psychological tension. The title itself is emblematic: the dead calm of the ocean, usually an image of serenity, becomes a source of unbearable anguish. The absence of wind and the immense expanse of empty water mean there is no escape and no hope of rescue. The boat becomes a claustrophobic prison, an isolated arena where Rae’s intelligence and resilience are tested against Hughie’s unpredictable madness. The sea transforms a paradise into a deadly trap.

Évolution (2015)

On a remote volcanic island inhabited only by women and young boys, young Nicolas makes a disturbing discovery while swimming: the body of a boy with a red starfish on his belly. This event leads him to question his reality, particularly the strange medical procedures he and the other boys are subjected to by their “mothers.”

Lucile Hadžihalilović’s film is an arthouse body horror, evocative and deeply unsettling. The sea is depicted as a primordial, almost uterine space, a source of both life and terror. The film’s horror is inextricably linked with marine biology, exploring themes of birth, metamorphosis, and reproduction through an aquatic and surreal aesthetic. The isolated island serves as a laboratory for a strange and disturbing form of evolution, translating adolescent fears of bodily change into a maritime nightmare.

Leviathan (2012)

An experimental documentary that immerses the viewer in the life aboard an industrial fishing trawler off the coast of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Without dialogue, narration, or a conventional structure, the film uses small GoPro cameras placed everywhere, from the men to the nets, to capture the violent and chaotic reality of work at sea.

This work from Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab is not a film about fishing; it is the physical and sensory experience of fishing. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel transform industrial labor into an almost abstract and terrifying spectacle. The images are disorienting, the sounds deafening. The sea is a black, turbulent mass, a chaotic force that shakes men and machines. The film is a total immersion into the brutality of the struggle between man and nature, an aquatic apocalypse that reveals the terrifying and sublime poetry hidden in the heart of the industry.

Bait (2019)

In a Cornish fishing village, Martin Ward, a man without a boat, struggles to make ends meet by selling his meager catch. His traditional life clashes with the invasion of wealthy tourists who have bought his family home and turned the harbor into a playground. Social, economic, and cultural tensions explode into a bitter and inevitable conflict.

The unique aesthetic of Mark Jenkin’s film is a direct reflection of its themes. Shot with a hand-cranked Bolex camera on 16mm black-and-white film, with sound entirely added in post-production, Bait looks like a lost artifact, a relic from a bygone era, much like the way of life Martin desperately tries to preserve. The alienating effect of the asynchronous sound underscores the lack of communication between the locals and the “incomers.” The sea is the pulsating heart of the conflict: for Martin, it is a source of identity and sustenance; for the tourists, it is just a postcard.

The Last of the Sea Women (2024)

This documentary follows the “haenyeo” of Jeju Island, South Korea, a community of elderly women who have been free-diving for centuries to gather seafood. Today, this matriarchal tradition is endangered by pollution, climate change, and the advanced age of the last practitioners, who fight to preserve their culture.

Produced by A24, the film is a moving portrait of a symbiotic and threatened relationship with the ocean. The sea is everything to the haenyeo: it is their field, their heritage, the foundation of their economic independence in a patriarchal society. But it is also a place of danger and, now, of scarcity. The documentary’s immersive and meditative style shows how the ocean is both “home and adversary” for these warriors, whose resilience in the face of a world that is changing their waters is as powerful as the tide.

Geographies of Solitude (2022)

An intimate portrait of Zoe Lucas, a naturalist who has lived for over forty years as the sole permanent resident of the remote Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia. The film documents her life dedicated to studying the island’s ecosystem, from wild horses to insects, to the meticulous cataloging of plastic waste that the sea relentlessly deposits on the beach.

This documentary is a profound meditation on a life lived in total symbiosis with the sea. The ocean is Zoe’s constant companion, the force that shapes the island and its biodiversity, but also the conveyor belt that brings her the debris of a distant and careless world. Shot on 16mm with eco-friendly techniques that mirror its protagonist’s ethics, the film is a poetic collaboration with the natural world, a story of solitude in which the sea is at once teacher, muse, and victim.

The Inland Sea (1991)

Based on the 1971 travelogue of the same name by writer and Japanologist Donald Richie, this documentary is a poetic and melancholic journey through the islands of Japan’s Inland Sea. Richie seeks traces of a fading traditional culture, reflecting on beauty, loss, and the passage of time.

Directed by Lucille Carra, the film is an elegy for a lost world. The Inland Sea is depicted as an almost mythical space, a “timeless heart” of Japan that modernity has largely spared. Richie’s calm narration, combined with the evocative score by Toru Takemitsu, creates a contemplative atmosphere. The sea here is not a place of conflict, but of quiet and reflection, a mirror of water that holds the memories of a lifestyle that is slowly disappearing, like the wake of a boat.

Kon-Tiki (2012)

The film recounts the daring feat of Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl who, in 1947, crossed the Pacific Ocean on a balsa wood raft. To prove his theory that Polynesians descended from South Americans, Heyerdahl and his small crew traveled 4,300 nautical miles from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands, facing storms, sharks, and the unknowns of the open sea.

Despite being a narrative film with a considerable budget for a Norwegian production, Kon-Tiki maintains a strong sense of realism that brings it close to a documentary. The Pacific Ocean is the true protagonist, described as a frontier as wonderful as it is lethal for human adventure. The open-sea sequences are breathtaking and convey the vulnerability of the raft against the immense power of nature. It is a tribute to old-fashioned exploration, an epic tale of human determination in the face of the sea’s immensity.

The Red Turtle (2016)

A man is shipwrecked on a deserted island. His attempts to escape on a raft are systematically thwarted by a large red turtle. After a violent confrontation, the creature transforms into a woman. The man and woman begin a life together on the island, going through all the stages of human existence: love, parenthood, and mortality.

This animated masterpiece, co-produced by Studio Ghibli and directed by Michaël Dudok de Wit, is a universal fable completely devoid of dialogue. The film is a pure visual allegory of the human condition. The island is a microcosm of life, and the sea represents the vast unknown that first isolates the man and then, mysteriously, delivers him salvation and love in the form of the turtle. The narrative explores the cycle of life and our relationship with a nature depicted as a powerful, mystical, and ultimately compassionate force.

Song of the Sea (2014)

Ben and his mute little sister, Saoirse, live in a lighthouse with their father, who is still heartbroken over the disappearance of his wife. When their grandmother takes them to live in the city, the two siblings run away to return home. During their journey, Ben discovers that Saoirse is a “selkie,” a mythological creature who is half-human and half-seal, and that her voice is the only hope for saving the magical creatures of Irish folklore.

The second film from Irish director Tomm Moore is an enchanting immersion into Celtic mythology. The Irish coast is where the modern and magical worlds meet. The sea is the source of Saoirse’s powers, her connection to her lost mother, and the realm of faerie creatures. The animation style, described as “gorgeous and painterly,” gracefully blends the everyday with the enchantment of folklore, suggesting that magic has not disappeared, but is simply hidden beneath the surface of the waves.

Ponyo (2008)

Little Sosuke, a five-year-old boy, rescues a goldfish with a human face and names her Ponyo. Ponyo is actually the daughter of a powerful sea wizard and desperately wants to become human. Using her father’s magic, she manages to transform, but this act upsets the balance of nature, unleashing a tsunami that threatens to submerge Sosuke’s village.

Hayao Miyazaki’s reinterpretation of “The Little Mermaid” is an explosion of visual joy and fantasy. The sea is depicted as a place of chaotic, vibrant, and at times unsettling magic. The tsunami is not a terrifying catastrophe, but an expression of Ponyo’s irrepressible joy. Beneath the surface of this children’s fable, Miyazaki inserts his classic ecological themes: the pollution that Ponyo’s father, Fujimoto, despises, and the need to restore a balance between the world of humans and the wild, magical world of the sea.

Whale Rider (2002)

In a Maori tribe in New Zealand, the male line of chiefs is broken. Young Paikea, the granddaughter of the current chief, feels a deep spiritual connection to her ancestors and the mythical whale rider from whom they descend. Despite her grandfather’s refusal, who believes only a man can lead the people, Pai must prove she is the destined leader.

This New Zealand film is a powerful and moving modern fable. The ocean is the central element of Maori identity and spirituality; it is the path through which the ancestors arrived and the source of the tribe’s spiritual power. Pai’s connection with the whales is the manifestation of this sacred bond. The climactic scene where she rides a whale is not just an act of courage, but a spiritual communion that heals the fracture between a rigid past and a future where leadership can take a new form, reaffirming the central role of the sea in her people’s identity.

L’Avventura (1960)

During a yacht trip off the Aeolian Islands, a young woman named Anna mysteriously disappears. Her lover, Sandro, and her best friend, Claudia, begin to search for her. However, their search soon turns into a aimless journey through an arid and desolate Sicily, as a new and uncertain relationship develops between the two.

A masterpiece by Michelangelo Antonioni and a turning point in modern cinema, L’Avventura uses the seascape to reflect the moral and emotional emptiness of the bourgeoisie. The barren, windswept volcanic islands and the immense, impassive sea symbolize the characters’ inner aridity. The unresolved plot is the heart of the film: the real “adventure” is not the search for Anna, but the protagonists’ aimless wandering in a meaningless world. The sea is a magnificent and indifferent void, swallowing people and emotions with the same carelessness.

Still Walking (2008)

A Japanese family gathers for the annual commemoration of the death of their eldest son, Junpei, who drowned fifteen years earlier while saving another boy. Over the course of a day, through conversations, shared meals, and small domestic rituals, old resentments, silent sorrows, and the complex dynamics of a family marked by grief emerge.

In the cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda, the sea is an “absent presence.” It is the site of the tragedy that has defined the Yokoyama family, an event that hovers over every interaction, although the water is rarely shown. The family home is near the coast, and the distant sound of waves or the whistle of a ferry serve as subtle reminders of the loss. The grief over the drowning has created an emotional stasis, an inability to move on, especially for the elderly parents. The sea, therefore, is not a setting, but an open wound in time.

The Isle (2000)

On an isolated lake, a mute woman manages floating fishing huts, which she rents to men to whom she also offers her body. She develops an obsessive and dangerous relationship with a man on the run from the law, a bond expressed through acts of extreme violence, self-mutilation, and mutual dependence.

Although set on a lake, South Korean director Kim Ki-duk’s film treats this body of water as an “inland sea,” a liquid body that isolates its inhabitants from society and its rules. The water is a space of poetic beauty and, at the same time, shocking brutality, reflecting the marginal existence of the characters. The aquatic setting becomes an almost primordial stage where Kim Ki-duk explores raw and instinctive emotions, outside the bounds of social convention, in a work as cruel as it is fascinating.

Breaking the Waves (1996)

In a rigid Calvinist community on the Scottish coast in the 1970s, the young and naive Bess marries Jan, an oil rig worker. When Jan is paralyzed in a work accident, he convinces her to seek other lovers and recount the details of her encounters to him. Bess, believing this sacrifice can save Jan, interprets his request as a divine will, embarking on a path of sacred and profane martyrdom.

The sea, in Lars von Trier’s masterpiece, is the place of love (Jan’s work on the rig) and tragedy (the accident that paralyzes him). The rugged, windswept coastal landscape mirrors the repressive and merciless nature of the religious community. The film’s raw style, with its handheld camera, immerses the viewer in this brutal environment, making Bess’s radical act of faith a desperate struggle against social repression and the indifferent force of nature.

Ondine (2009)

Syracuse, a solitary Irish fisherman with a difficult past, one day pulls a beautiful and mysterious woman from his nets. His young daughter, who is ill and wheelchair-bound, becomes convinced that the woman is a “selkie,” a mythological creature from Celtic folklore. Her presence seems to bring luck and magic into their lives, blurring the lines between fairy tale and reality.

Neil Jordan uses the Irish coast as a place where myth can still manifest in the modern world. The sea is the source of mystery and magic, the vehicle through which Ondine arrives to shake the protagonist’s cynicism and despair. Christopher Doyle’s cinematography avoids postcard beauty, immersing the fairy tale in a rugged and realistic coastal world. The sea is not just a backdrop, but the element that allows a fairy tale to take root in the land, suggesting that a little magic is necessary to survive harsh reality.

For Those in Peril (2013)

Aaron is the sole survivor of a fishing accident in a small Scottish village, in which five people, including his older brother, lost their lives. Ostracized and tormented by guilt, Aaron clings to local legends, convincing himself that a sea demon has taken the men and that his brother is still alive, trapped in the depths.

The sea, in this powerful Scottish drama, is a place of trauma and folklore. Director Paul Wright externalizes the survivor’s pain and guilt through the myth of the “sea devil.” The community uses superstition to make sense of an inexplicable tragedy, turning Aaron into a scapegoat. The hypnotic and fragmented visual style, which mixes mobile phone footage and news reports, reflects the protagonist’s psychological state, consumed by a grief that reality cannot contain and that finds expression only in the dark mythology of the sea.

Lucía (1968)

An epic of Cuban history told through the lives of three women named Lucía in three crucial periods: the war of independence in 1895, the fight against dictatorship in the 1930s, and the cultural changes of the post-revolution in the 1960s. Each segment adopts a different cinematic style to reflect the spirit of its time.

The third episode of this monumental film by Humberto Solás is a comedy set in a rural community. Although not strictly coastal, its proximity to the sea makes it a microcosm of the new Cuba. The protagonist’s struggle against her husband’s machismo, who forbids her from working by declaring “I am the revolution!”, explores the idea that political change does not automatically translate into social liberation. The nearby sea symbolizes a horizon of freedom yet to be reached, where revolutionary ideals clash with deep-rooted patriarchal structures.

The Color of Pomegranates (1969)

A non-narrative and deeply poetic portrait of the life of the 18th-century Armenian troubadour, Sayat-Nova. Director Sergei Parajanov abandons conventional biography to create a series of “tableaux vivants” (living pictures), visual compositions rich in religious, folkloric, and national symbolism to explore the poet’s inner world.

This film is not set at sea, but its inclusion in this list is a testament to its profound understanding of elemental symbolism. Water is a constant and vital presence. Live fish, writhing between the pages of a book, in the poet’s hands, or between two loaves of bread, are a recurring and powerful image. They symbolize life, spirituality, sacrifice, and torment. In this masterpiece, water is not a setting, but a pure element, a symbol that connects to the universal idea of the sea as a source of life and mystery, demonstrating an approach to the theme that goes beyond literal representation.

The sea of independent cinema is, ultimately, a place of the soul. These films, with their formal audacity and thematic depth, show us that the waves can be a mirror of our deepest fears, a catalyst for our resilience, or a portal to myth. They move away from the surface to explore the invisible currents that shape the human experience, offering visions of the ocean as complex, terrifying, and unforgettable as the ocean itself.