End Of Contract

Notes:

When I joined my third and eventually, my final ship, I had no intention of making a short film of any kind, instead I wanted to write a book. But after the first month of planning and writing the first few pages I lost my motivation because the work had become increasingly exhausting and all I ever want with my free time is to rest my weary bones.

A few months passed, then summer arrived with sweltering heat. It was during the middle of summer while we were in Middle East, of all places, that our ship dropped its anchor. The anchor stayed on the seabed for two months, and so for two months we were dealing with intense heat and a lack of wind because the ship was not moving.

It was July when I had the opportunity of capturing footages while I was working. I didn’t have any plan, all I wanted was to document the kind of work we were doing, but I was dismayed at the result. Because the work that I’ve been filming was fairly easy compared to the real tough jobs we do in the ship, and it was impossible to film the kind of jobs I’d like to document. And then I discovered in YouTube that there are already a lot of seafarers who made video blogs showing the difficult jobs we do.

I scrapped my initial idea, but then I realized that it was such a shame to waste the footages I took. Then I thought what if I just showed the typical day onboard a ship. The slow and monotonous life at sea, the menial jobs we do every day, and the loneliness that envelops it all.

I also wanted to emphasize more the current state of the world and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic among the seafarers, because in the news we are all well aware of lockdowns and the quarantine situations on different cities across the globe, but at sea not many people are conscious of what seafarers go through every day.

During the pandemic it had become a common issue to have the crew working for more than what their contract says. Although it is a clear violation on the Maritime Labour Convention’s (MLC) 11-month limit, seafarers are forced to work exhausting and dangerous jobs without having any idea when they will be sent home. In other ships, the crew refused to work, becoming passengers while waiting to be repatriated. But in our ship, we continued the soul-sucking routine of our jobs, some already spending 16 months inside the ship. Cabins started to feel like prison cells, bodies heavy with a year worth of work, minds clinging to a promise of unbroken sleep when finally, they are back in their own beds at home.

Influences/style:

Cinéma vérité, observational cinema, slow cinema, and the early films of Jim Jarmusch.