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Thistlegorm 1941. A ballad in the depths of time

Beneath the Red Sea lies the SS Thistlegorm, bombed in 1941 and preserved as a time capsule. Trucks, motorcycles, guns, and steel now rest in silence, embraced by the ocean. This 8-minute short film is both a dive into history and a meditation on memory — how the sea does not erase, it preserves.

  • Massimiliano Santoro
    Director
  • Massimiliano Santoro
    Writer
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Thistlegorm 1941 -1945. un ballata nel tempo sommerso
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short
  • Runtime:
    8 minutes 12 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 12, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    2,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Country of Filming:
    Egypt
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • Films that move
    Kingston
    Jamaica
    Selected
Director Biography - Massimiliano Santoro

Massimiliano Santoro is a cultural anthropologist and holds a PhD in socio-cultural anthropology of modern Europe from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. He is a university lecturer and trainer, with a long-standing focus on organizational change, culture, and learning practices. He is the author of several essays, with particular attention to the history of Haiti and the Caribbean in the colonial era, exploring dynamics of power, slavery, and freedom. Alongside his research, he has developed a creative path in photography and video: his photographs have been exhibited at Spazio Forma in Milan, and one of his video works was presented at the Triennale di Milano during the exhibition dedicated to Gianni Berengo Gardin.
Whether through academic writing, photography, or film, his work explores the interplay between memory, identity, and transformation, blending scholarly rigor with a strong narrative sensibility.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

When I first dived into the wreck of the SS Thistlegorm, I felt I was entering not only a piece of history, but a place suspended between time and memory. Trucks perfectly aligned, motorcycles waiting to be ridden, a gun still pointing into emptiness — all of them seemed less like relics of war and more like fragments of a collective unconscious, preserved by the sea.
As a cultural anthropologist, I have always been fascinated by the way memory survives through places, objects, and stories. The ocean, in this sense, is the ultimate archivist: it does not erase, it holds.

With Thistlegorm 1941–2025, I wanted to create not just a documentary of a shipwreck, but a poetic meditation on memory, loss, and transformation. The film is a ballad of steel and silence, where history and imagination merge, and where the sea becomes both guardian and storyteller.
This short film is also a personal journey: a way of reflecting on how the past continues to live within us, and how the act of remembering — through images, words, and sounds — can help us connect to something larger than ourselves.