Home Is the Ocean
Livia Vonaesch, Switzerland, 2024o
The Swiss couple Schwörer have been sailing the world's oceans for 25 years, carrying out research and educational work on environmental protection - and raising their six children between the ages of babies and teenagers on their boat with a living space of 20 square meters. The filmmaker accompanies the family for seven years and documents how their radical lifestyle challenges conventional norms of upbringing, education, security and individualism, but also confronts them with problems that force them to constantly rethink the constellation.
Accompanied by a gentle piano track, Swiss filmmaker Livia Vonaesch's first feature-length documentary pushes some tough boundaries. The eight-member Schwörer family has always shared a 20m² sailboat. The youngest children sleep under the dining table and squeeze past each other in the morning, while their parents sail around the globe to promote environmental protection and take water samples for climate researchers in the most remote places – including the Arctic, where they teach their children how to shoot polar bears in an emergency. At night, the teenagers also steer the boat, and if the weather is too stormy to cook, they eat bouillon for three days. The director, who is also responsible for the impressive camera work, accompanied the family for seven years. Her closeness to the protagonists is sometimes reinforced by their subjective helmet camera footage. As the six children mature over the course of the film, the question arises of what it must be like to grow up without a permanent home, without long-term relationships with peers, and without any place to retreat to. With their radical alternative to the individualistic lifestyle, the two adults are torn between their ecological mission and their responsibility as parents. In addition to these challenges, the film shows numerous moments of happiness in this collectivist life in close contact with nature. The children are also remarkably resilient and possess skills that far exceed those of their peers on land. With all these elements, right up to the deep crisis before the finale, Home Is the Ocean has the makings of a big Hollywood drama – and yet it is not. All the more impressive!
Ella Rocca