Berlinale Generation Kplus: About Venice Atienza’s documentary Last Days at Sea

Again and again the view­er hears the sound of the sea. Like in a med­i­ta­tion, Venice Atienza’s doc­u­men­tary ensures that the young and adult view­ers of the Berli­nale screen­ing in the open-air cin­e­ma in the Hasen­hei­de can dream them­selves into the dis­tance. It is thanks to the new “side” screen in the Hasen­hei­de, which can also be used dur­ing the day when the sun is shin­ing, that the children’s sec­tion of the Berli­nale was able to take place at all. Inci­den­tal­ly, that was the very first chance that chil­dren like our son could go to the cin­e­ma again since Novem­ber 2020.

“When the crabs are big, they leave their clamshells. And then a lit­tle crab comes along and makes it her home, ” the film­mak­er tells her young, 12-year-old pro­tag­o­nist Rey­boy. Reyboy’s home is the tiny vil­lage of Kar­i­hatag in the Philip­pines, on the island of Min­danao, far from the cap­i­tal Mani­la. There is only one ele­men­tary school in his vil­lage. His uncle Buboy is a fish­er­man. But the fish­ing pro­fes­sion has grown tough since the big fish­ing trawlers off­shore over­fished the waters and min­i­mized the catch­es of local fish­er­men. More and more often they return with­out tuna. Once one of the fish­er­men shows his catch of the day: two tiny fish.

Rey­boy loves to swim and dive and he is inter­est­ed in nature and marine life. Even if he has no idea about the size and diver­si­ty of the world, even if he can­not even imag­ine that there are peo­ple on this earth who do not even know Kar­i­hatag, he still has dreams: “Can birds reach the clouds? Oh they can? I want that. To be able to play over there. That’s what I want. To be a bird. ”And because his par­ents real­ize that the only way for Rey­boy to escape the hard, fruit­less, poor and dan­ger­ous work of a fish­er­man in Kar­i­hatag is to go to the dis­tant city. They decid­ed to send him to high school. Rey­boy knows, how­ev­er, that he will then live a long way away from his par­ents, and he knows that when it comes up he can see his par­ents once a month.

The film­mak­er accom­pa­nies Rey­boy on his last days in the vil­lage, on the last days of his child­hood, in his favorite place, the sea. And she already tells him a lit­tle bit about the big world that he will soon encounter, and she learns about his dreams, his thoughts, his wish­es at this pos­si­bly sig­nif­i­cant turn­ing point in his life. This cre­ates a poet­ic dia­logue from two dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, that of the 10-year-old vil­lage boy on the one hand and that of the adult film­mak­er on the oth­er.

„This gen­uine curios­i­ty in want­i­ng to know a per­son who is dif­fer­ent from you is very impor­tant. Because I feel this is the only way we can learn to care for one anoth­er, when we real­ly open our­selves for them,” explains the direc­tor. I think instill­ing that curios­i­ty into chil­dren is one of the most valu­able things that par­ents can do for their chil­dren. And that can be just as suc­cess­ful in a fam­i­ly in a poor vil­lage on Min­danao as it is in a fam­i­ly like ours in Berlin-Neukölln or any­where in the world. And maybe Venice Atienza’s film opened our son’s eyes a lit­tle bit to how chil­dren live in com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent regions of the world, and that com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent things are impor­tant for the ten-year-old Rey­boy from Kar­i­hatag than for the six-year-old Julius from Berlin-Neukölln – and that they may still both be chil­dren with some­how sim­i­lar dreams and needs.

The Fil­ipino doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Venice Atien­za was born in 1989. She lives part­ly in Mani­la and part­ly in Mum­bai. In her work she is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the ques­tion of how every­day actions can bring about changes in life. She is an alum­na of the Euro­pean Doc­No­mads pro­gram and found­ed the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Svemirko Film Pro­duc­tions togeth­er with the Tai­wanese direc­tor and pro­duc­er Fan Wu, which aims to offer a plat­form for doc­u­men­tary auteur films. Last Days at Sea is her fea­ture film debut.

LAST DAYS AT SEA

by Venice Atien­za
with John Rus­sel Rey „Rey­boy” Paño, Cre­sente „Buboy” Beto­nio, Cle­ofe „Neneng” Beto­nio, Flo­recita „Babe” Paño, Emi­bie Paño
Philip­pines / Tai­wan 2021
Taga­log, Cebuano, sub­ti­tles: Eng­lish
71 min­utes