After more than a year of restoring and rebuilding the wood catamaran Mara Noka, Kiana Weltzien, Laerke Heilmann, and Alizé Jireh set sail from North Carolina in June 2022 headed for Flores Island in the Azores. Over the course of a month, the three women ignite the flames of curiosity and adventure which lay dormant within so many of us, by deepening our understanding of the synergy between nature and humanity.
Motivated by Weltzien’s first North Atlantic crossing in 2019, where she witnessed a plastic-littered ocean, the trio set off across the North Atlantic again to follow plastic pollution on its ride to Europe via the Gulf Stream. Throughout the voyage, larger floating debris including fishing nets, buckets, bottles, plastic bags, and nylon ropes were constant companions.
Though the initial intention of the film was to focus on telling this story of plastic, the voyage took on a much more personal tone as the days progressed. Weltzien, the owner and captain of Mara Noka, is a former realtor from Miami who chucked her career to become a professional sailor; Heilmann is a Danish illustrator, surfer, and ocean conservationist living in the Canary Islands; and Jireh is a Dominican self-taught filmmaker based in the Midwest. The women were faced with the reality of life at sea with no space from each other or themselves. Calms and tempests reflected their own inner workings, and an entire moon’s cycle on the ocean brought their femininity to the forefront. They experienced their fragility and their strengths with an intensity that is unmatched, transforming this film into an intimate portrayal of woman and nature.
