Ruby Gillman, a sweet and awkward high school student, discovers she's a direct descendant of the warrior kraken queens. The kraken are sworn to protect the oceans of the world against the vain, power-hungry mermaids. Destined to inherit the throne from her commanding grandmother, Ruby must use her newfound powers to protect those she loves most.
Seventeen talented Australian directors from diverse artistic disciplines each create a chapter of the hauntingly beautiful novel by multi award-winning author Tim Winton. The linking and overlapping stories explore the extraordinary turning points in ordinary people’s lives in a stunning portrait of a small coastal community. As characters face second thoughts and regret, relationships irretrievably alter, resolves are made or broken, and lives change direction forever.
The wife of an Irish school teacher is branded a traitor when she falls for a British officer who is part of an occupying force in 1917 Ireland.
A young girl celebrating her last night out in her hometown is stalked by a mysterious killer in a Mr Punch mask.
In a Russian coastal town, Kolya is forced to fight the corrupt mayor when he is told that his house will be demolished. He recruits a lawyer friend to help, but the man's arrival brings further misfortune for Kolya and his family.
Cecilia, Alberto, and Felipe live through a strange epidemic that plagues the abandoned streets of a coastal town. Suddenly, an uncontrollable desire forces them to leave in search of the sea.
In a small English coastal town, three teenage boys are drawn into a world of temptation and violence. Bored, troubled and excluded, the boys are unable to accept or even recognise moral boundaries. Their actions move inexorably towards a truly shocking act, that will horrify their sleepy community and expose its deepest, hidden fears.
Nicholas Rice, a renowned journalist for the LA Times, returns to his hometown of 'The Dunes'. While he's there, a mysterious figure from his past re-emerges and threatens his entire existence.
A grumpy old man living in an idyllic coastal town who can't see he has the perfect life.
The story is set in a small Dalmatian town. Soon after the death of a local nobleman, a girl who worked as a servant in his house, gets pregnant. Even though the father's identity remains unknown, the whole neighborhood saw a naked man jumping down from her window on that same night when the nobleman died. Local teacher who lives in that house, falls in love with the girl who decides to tell him the truth about the "naked man".
A panorama of scenic beauty unfolds as the newspaper delivery man works his run along Sydney's northern beaches of Newport and the Palm Beach area.
Shiva and Hari, two friends who are polar opposites in demeanour, are the terror in Mangaladevi. What happens when ego, ambition and jealousy creeps in between their strong friendship?
A small coastal town, where almost everybody are into fishing. Niko and Mato are friends, both in loved with the same girl Visnja, in charge of the fishermen's strike against the owners of the fishing boats. After being caught, Mato betrays his friends. Thus he becomes the subject of scorn both by the entire village and Visnja, who then marries Niko.
Summer is a permanent state of mind in Limassol, a once small seaside town in Cyprus now transforming into the oligarch paradise of the Mediterranean. Within its asphyxiating environment, Tina, a depressed food stylist is ready to give up on everything on the day of her birthday, until an extraordinary encounter changes her life.
The story of unfortunate lovers from contemporary Belgrade, a young woman married for money, and a student whom she loved before marriage. Juvenile love romance gets extinguished by social intolerance, calculated and upstarted.
Instead of enjoying her vacations in a peaceful peninsula of Turkey, Anna feels stuck in a strange torpor, while her boyfriend, Thomas, doesn't seem to notice it at all. Later in the afternoon, when a little girl suddenly disappears on the beach, Anna awakens and decides to go and find her, despite the unknown and the nightfall.
An ex-prostitute, now a washerwoman, asks for a pension for her previous "employment", which socialism, with its human principles, does not disapprove. To realize her right, she needs two witnesses, and she has many more. But none of them will testify. A whole society shows its selfishness, false morality, prejudice. She dies without realizing her great wish.
Sassnitz is a small coastal town at the Baltic Sea on the Island of Rügen. In its vicinity are the world-famous chalk cliffs, a tourist magnet. The Mukran Port is also part of the municipality. The overseas port is the starting point for the construction of Nord Stream 2, a natural gas pipeline that connects Germany directly with Russia. In 2020, the port town hit the international headlines. Even the New York Times reported and cited Mayor Frank Kracht as a staunch opponent from the northeast German province against the rumbling America of Donald Trump. The reason is the undisguised threat from Washington to ruin the international port economically if the natural gas pipeline continues to be built from there. Many jobs and the region's economic stability are at risk. Reporter Klaus Scherer documents the case, questions experts as well as those affected and looks at the behavior of national politicians towards the USA and how they react to the interference in internal affairs.
Every day, at sunrise, the Sítio Porto Alegre School students arrive by boat for another school day. As Professor Rui seeks to catch the attention of the 3rd grade children, new principal Leidi and school boatman Raimundo try to solve the lack of fuel problem caused by the little money sent by the government. These are rainy days in Curralinho township, on Marajó Island, where a school community resists.
An abundant fog has engulfed the coastal cove where Agatha lives, preventing her father, a humble fisherman, from returning home. Unable to take care of her, her mother casts her out.