Versione inglese a cura del Master in Traduzione per il Cinema, la Televisione e l’Editoria Multimediale

Article by: Alessia Durante

Translation by: Federica Betti, Ilaria Loiacono

“Imagination is able to transform an idea coming from a theoretical lesson into an upsetting emotional experience. For that reason, we’ve decided to tell We Are The Tide as a modern sci-fi feature film”. Those are Sebastian Higle’s words, the director of Wir sind die Flut, running for the 34° edition of the Torino Film Festival.

On April 5th 1994, in a coastal town of Germany, the tide’s run out and all the children of the city have disappeared with it, leaving the whole population in a bubble where the time has stopped. After fifteen years, this incomprehensible phenomenon has not been solved yet, but the student and physics researcher Micha (Max Mauf) is obsessed by that and he is convinced that the explanation of everything lies in science and in the application of its rules (and exceptions). Despite he couldn’t find any supports from the university in solving the mystery of what he calls “gravitational anomalies”, he still decides of following his heart, or rather his calculations, and go to Windholm. Jana (Lana Cooper), the daughter of his teacher with a checkered past, wants to follow him in this adventure.

Once they arrive there, Micha and Jana have to deal not only with the inhabitants, still grieving for the facts occurred 15 years before, but also with themselves. They will be saved by their obstinacy and will to admit that there is no rational explanation to what happened.

Hilger’s film takes your breath away. It is capable of keeping the audience constantly on edge, also thanks to the excellent choice of the soundtrack and the elegance of the frames immersed in a really cold light. This thriller shows a mixture of science and soul-searching, that affects everyone inside and outside of the film. In fact, as Hanna (Gro Swantje Kohlhof), the only girl of the village left, says: “some are scared by the emptiness that the ocean had brought by disappearing, because that emptiness means looking inside yourself […] and fear lives inside you”.