Beyond the Raging Sea (2018)

• 86%
• 2018
• Documentary
• Marco Orsini

'Beyond the Raging Sea' is an action-adventure documentary chronicling the ordeals and transformational experience of Omar Samra and Omar Nour, two Egyptian extreme athletes who enter the world's toughest competition: the Atlantic Challenge, an unsupported 3,000 mile open-ocean rowing race from the Canary Islands to Antigua. Neither Omar had experience on water when they registered for the Challenge, though Nour had represented Egypt on the Olympic triathlon circuit and Samra was a mountaineer who had climbed Everest and skied to both the North and South Poles. But both were searching for a new challenge and a new cause. After a year of intense training, Team O2 embarked from the Canary Islands heading for Antigua, dedicating their high-profile exploit to the plight of refugees worldwide, for whom unimaginable peril, exposure and even death at sea comes to tens of thousands annually. In an ironic twist, these privileged athletes find themselves confronting the same dangers, fears and impossible decisions as those they meant to recognize and relieve. As their high-tech, unsinkable, US$1m row boat capsizes, the two men discover that a mid-gale rescue can be even more terrifying than being lost, on a raft, in the middle of the Atlantic. After our protagonists jaw-dropping rescue (filmed as it happened by the ship's crew), the film pivots to the stories of a Syrian husband and father and a young African man whose own harrowing journeys offer illuminating counterpoint. In the extraordinary ordeal of our two Westernised protagonists, this documentary personalizes and universalizes the plight of refugees, making their lives, dreams and sacrifices our own.