The sea is gone, leaving behind an endlessly dry seabed. Merciless dunes engulf the ocean’s lost harbors and rotten shipwrecks. Towns are slowly dying in the growing desert. People laugh about Marat who pushes two train tracks under the hull of his ship, ties a cable on an anchor winch and starts to pull his ship towards the horizon, hunting the vanished sea as he crosses the sandy wasteland. Some people think Marat is crazy but he pulls and pulls… Only Tamara, his deceased wife’s, sister, is not laughing. As long as she can think, she has been in love with him. However, he rejects her-as he cannot forget his dead wife and believes that he doesn’t need a woman for his mission. Therefore Marat insults and humiliates Tamara. A fortune teller predicts Marat, that very soon, in the magical New Year’s night the ocean will return. In that night the ship needs to be moving and it needs to sail! It needs to be pulled with all strength, no matter how weakened the strength is! Without help it cannot be done. Marat still has one close friend, Baltasar who is the oceans museum director and curator. He is his last hope. The museum is an old boat which is located at a lost harbor. The curator shows school classes what is left over from the past. Day after day he sits on his viewpoint and stares into the desert. The town’s inhabitants make fun of him but remain cautious as he is feared. This is due to his son Jason whose nickname is Gidschakist (after the guitarlike instrument that he plays). Jason is the head of the local youth gang, who rob trucks that drive along the desert. In front of his father Gidschakist pretends to be the harmless musician. It is better to keep a safe distance from someone like that… One day the Gidschakist shows Kwidak, a rich local who is passionate about ships, Marats boat. He offers Marat a lot of money for his ship and a good job position as their captain, if he is willing to transport the schooner to a far off river. With the help of the Gidschakist and his friends, Kwidad tries to break Marat’s resistance with cruelty and fraud. The unfair fight finally forces Marat to his limits: to protect his dream he uses his own hands to set his ship on fire. Next, he finds himself barely alive in agony and pain on a train. At this point, Marat meets Tamara again and their lost souls find each other in a moment of bitter love… At the same time in the desert a terrible blood act takes place. The terrorized truck drivers come together to kill the Gidschakist without mercy underneath the trucks wheels… The night of the New Year is coming closer and closer. Marat leaves Tamara as he is obsessed with the thought that the ocean will come back. He returns to his ship, where he meets Baltasar. As an atonement for the crimes of his dead son, he began to rebuild Marat’s burned down schooner. As the old friends cry, they meet up together to discuss vital preparations to pull the ship towards the ocean when the New Year’s night arrives. Then however, an unexpected event occurs: An hour before midnight, a damaged airplane comes closer. It needs to make an emergency landing. But the local airport’s landing track is covered by sand dunes, the lighting does not work and there is no other safety operator. At that moment Baltasar makes an announcement to the whole town-everyone hurries to offer a helping hand. Hundreds of people begin working until their hands bleed. Due to all the excitement, Baltasar forgets about his friend Marat, who is deeply hurt by the apparent unfaithfulness of his friend. He makes his way into the desert to reach his ship in time to greet the returning ocean, ready to sail once again on the gigantic ocean. But the airplane did not land at all. The technical problem can be resolved in the air. Only briefly the airplane’s lights flash and shortly after it disappears into the black sky. The following morning the people begin to realize that the ship has sailed- together with Marat. The only thing that can be seen is the wet sand and the crabs that move around on it. So it happened, the unheard-of: The ocean has returned. However the people did not believe in it and therefore the ocean has once again left them, this time it took Marat who will never return.

Opening at Rome Film Festival (2012)