“Fishing Without Nets”
Directed by Cutter Hodierne
Starring Abdikani Muktar, Abdi Siad, Abduwhali Faarah, Abdikhadir Hassan, Reda Kateb, Idil Ibrahim
U.S.A./Somalia/Kenya
109 Mins
No name cast recreates Somali pirates premise, the left-field zeitgeist du jour, exploring themes of hubris and self-preservation in its slack-lined narrative that sporadically delivers emotional welts. With a hook of a first act and a gut-wrenching conclusion, the middle bits of Fishing Without Nets are left a little undercooked but by the time we get to the tail end of it, we’ve all but forgotten any moments of ennui. We’re too busy collectively picking our jaws up off the floor.
Expanded from the 2012 short film of the same name which won him the Sundance Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking, director Cutter Hodierne returns to the high seas of pirating. Abdi, who through years of working as a fisherman is a veteran navigator of international shipping channels, is hard won into the gun-totting pirating industry. But what can you expect of a young family man whose aquatic resources have seemingly swum towards better waters? With the influx of more and more tankers disrupting a once lively ecosystem, the supply and demand chain has been forever shifted, perhaps forever tainted, and the salt of desperation has the power to force even the most ethical of hands.
There’s something a bit fishy about the fact that the writer/director, Cutter Hodierne, of this Somalian-perspective drama is a white American. Attempts to adopt another culture’s perspective can read ham-fisted but when you take Hodierne’s dramatic background into consideration, it’s no wonder the man is sea-obsessed. Before his birth, his parents left behind their lives, jobs, and families and took to a 32-foot sailboat, for which he was named, subsequently raising him aboard the craft for the first three years of his life. Accordingly, salt water must run deep in his veins.
It’s no wonder then that the most chilling sequences of Fishing Without Nets comes from the harrowing uncertainty of ocean living. Plowed in by waves and surrounded by endlessness, there is visceral fear in the assumed serenity of the sea. Seeing that fear translate to desperation and then added to the high stakes of pirating makes for some incredibly compelling and emotional viewing.
Filmed entirely in Somali, we can only imagine the behind-the-scenes language barriers Hodierne and his cast had to fight through. According to Hodierne, the heavy physicality and frequent improvisation made for light-footed scene work, “I relied on the translator and the actors for ideas and culturally relevant conversations and scenes so working with them was a collaborative process. They brought cultural and linguistic elements to the film that I could not.” Though this set the stage for some scenes that stretched on past their dramatic limitations, the glowering scowls beading from Abdi Siad‘s Blackie is enough to keep us on the edge of our seats and drive the tension to skyward heights.
B-
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By: Matt Oakes
Matt Oakes is the founder and editor-in-chief of Silver Screen Riot. A Tomatometer-approved critic on Rotten Tomatoes, he’s a founding member of the Seattle Film Critics Society and a member of the Online Film Critics Society. He started writing about movies in college, when the university paper wouldn’t have him, and has been reviewing ever since, covering festivals like Sundance and SIFF along the way. He has a soft spot for horror movies that make him die a little inside, a healthy skepticism of film Twitter’s consensus favorites, and a philosophy degree he swears is relevant. He’s based in Seattle.
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