Between Drifting Away and Coming Back to Yourself: The Son and the Sea by Stroma Cairns

With The Son and the Sea, Kraków’s Mastercard OFF CAMERA International Festival of Independent Cinema provides a cinematic echo chamber for self-discovery. Responsibility and trust takes center stage in this film that tackles the contemporary malaise of Western society.

When Jonah wakes up and tells himself, “This will be a good day”, it’s anything but certain. He lives in Bermondlay, the former slum and now upscale London neighborhood, and his flashbacks of memories from the past few nights are limited to drinking binges and disco scenes. Jonah (Jonah West) isn’t the only young man with relationship stress, anxiety, latent aggression, and a constant urge to mock, which doesn’t even spare his loyal and only companion, Lee (Stanley Brock). Behind his demeanor lies a complete disorientation and a lack of identity. In his local area, there’s even a term for it: the Bermondlay stutter. Ultimately, Jonah is just one of many young people in Western cultural nations belonging to the “No Future” generation, rushing from moment to moment while simultaneously feeling that this is not the solution, either.

This is The Son and the Sea (2025, Stroma Cairns, British filmmaker and director), which screened as part of the international competition of Kraków’s Mastercard OFF CAMERA International Festival of Independent Cinema, which aims to promote films beyond mainstream productions. This first feature film by Cairns is based on the very personal experiences of the work’s co-writer, Imogen West. Several family members play active roles, not least Marie West, the now deceased lonely woman in the nursing home, to whom the film is dedicated.

Jonah is faced with the unpleasant task of visiting an aunt suffering from dementia in the far north of Scotland. He arrives in an unassuming coastal village where damp and cold prevail, and the inhabitants experience daily the fragility of their existence in the face of the elements. Lee accompanies him, and on their very first day, they befriend deaf-mute brothers Charlie (Connor Tompkins) and Luke (Lewis Tompkins), who are also busy arguing. The more energetic Charlie tries, in vain, to draw the two Londoners’ attention to small moments of natural beauty.

Initially, it is the deep blue and gray tones of their new surroundings that transmit their unease. Jonah’s first visit to his aunt ends with a recognition of helplessness, as he is unable to connect with her. In a bar, Jonah and Lee meet a local singer who is performing a Scottish fable about the encounter between the devil and an unsuspecting child. In The Son and the Sea, eight more songs will be heard, all of them transcending pure realism into a poetic, at times even metaphysical, dimension.

The aesthetic choice of numerous rapid cuts evokes the fragmented, drifting mental state of the protagonists. Jonah and Lee repeatedly find themselves locked in fruitless arguments, accusing each other of their inner emptiness, lack of success, and inability to form friendships, let alone romantic relationships. The explicit comparison to dominoes, loosely connected and falling one after the other, creates a crystalline image.

Only the confrontation with a potentially fatal accident brings about a change. Faced with an injured person, Jonah, Lee, and Charlie must decide whether to provide immediate assistance, risking prosecution under today’s medical system, or wait for professional help to arrive hours later, most likely too late. In the hospital, the camerawork again drifts aimlessly and without focus through the events, once more convincingly demonstrating the friction between the depiction and the characters’ mental states. Jonah, Lee, and Charlie gather for a prayer. Jonah gives thanks for the opportunity to have been given a real task, he gives thanks for the trust, and for the first time, he asks Lee for forgiveness.

Returning to his aunt, he finds heartfelt, deeply moving words and manages to draw her out of her mental stagnation. Off-frame, his voice is heard expressing his desire to cast off the darkness and negative experiences of the past, allowing suppressed feelings, weaknesses, and desires to resurface. Later, Lee writes “we were here” in the sand, and The Son and the Sea ends with the first and only scene of unbridled joy in life.

Without any artificial dramaturgy or sentimentality, and by observing the protagonists’ inner dynamics with nuance, Cairns succeeds in taking a stand on one of the key questions facing contemporary Western culture. She deciphers self-destructive processes as a reaction to an existence experienced as devoid of meaning. An escape from this mental prison can only be achieved through the experience of trust and the ability to take responsibility.

Dieter Wieczorek

Edited by Olivia Popp

@FIPRESCI2026