Me & The Sea is the story of a 25 year unfinished ‘Voyage of discovery’ film who’s failure as a project is counterbalanced by the success it inspired in the lives of it’s crew and a snapshot in time at the fall of the SovietUnion during a year that changed the world.

The feature documentary (running at 1hr 23 mins) serves as a standalone piece but is also the departure point for potential series of ‘ocean stories’ discovering other ‘Me’s’ from the title, whose lives are dedicated to or inspired by the ocean.

The feature is an ‘origins’ of the series, taking place around the personal stories of 4 young men who set sail in 1994 from Japan to the rarely visited former soviet seaport of Kamchatka. Using a combination of footage from the trip, new interviews over 25 years later and historical archive material from 1994, the story beautifully shows how the trip served as a fundamental formative experience for the young sailors (with the spirit of adventure as a key theme for building character and their subsequent lives after) but also as a snapshot of a time of great significance for the planet.

Particularly poignant given current world events, we’re offered a rare snapshot behind the then recently lifted Iron curtain.

The young crew sail the first civilian boat into the post Soviet-era nuclear submarine base of Kamchatka. We see the vastly different lives of the inhabitants of the former USSR as if peering into an era that seemed bygone even in 1994.

5 One of the most striking features of the films 25 year hiatus is just how much impact the journey had upon all of them without their overt knowledge, how it has shaped their impressive future careers.

Now with the film’s completion in 2021 a new chapter is set as Kamchatka stands on the verge of an oceanic ecological crisis.

One of the former crew members was so inspired by the trip that their subsequent career may just hold the key to helping rectify the ecological damage in the region.

With the resurgent threat imposed by Russia and the possibility of a new cold war, the film is as poignant and relevant now as much as ever.