SCATTERED SEA – Film

Experimental film, 2K, color, 5.1 dolby surround, 13’27”, MA/MT/DE

Logos competition Lia Saile Scattered Sea at 4 film festivals

Trailer ‘Scattered Sea’, 2025

Moving between magical realism, performance and documentary, the experimental film Scattered Sea is an exploration of how people can connect with each other across borders in a multi-relationally diverse world with its cracks of entangled historical traumas, a fractured present, power imbalances and a deep longing for belonging.

17 performers from North Africa and Europe interact and relate to each other, creating hybrid spaces, intertwining, seeking closeness. The film was shot across Morocco, Malta, and Germany. This geopolitical triangle reflects layered colonial legacies and contemporary frictions between Europe and the MENA region. Through minimal gestures the performers inscribe and unsettle space. Moments of proximity and distance unfold; ruins, gardens, and streets are roamed, each path seemingly returning toward the sea. Symbols are traced and deconstructed, pomegranates dissected as a river overflows on ornamental tiles, invading interior space. The search for remnants transforms into an act of scattering traces — daring fragile beginnings. 

Embedding theories by philosophers such as Édouard Glissant’s ‘opacité’, honouring the unknown and unknowable, and Hannah Arendt’s ‘natality’, the potential within every beginning to open unforeseen paths, cultural memory, decolonial inquiry, and historiographic critique converge. Counter-narratives resist linear temporality and binary world orders, proposing instead a poetics of multiplicity and renewal. A space opens for social and aesthetic imaginaries attuned to plural futures, as amid twilight a new island is built between continents on the sea.

Screenings & Official Selection

41st Alexandria Mediterranean Film Festival, Alexandria, EG, October 2025 (Competition)
29th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, Prague, CZ, October 2025 (Competition)
12th Zambia Short Film Festival, Lusaka, ZM, October 2025 (Competition)
30th Rabat International Author Film Festival, Rabat, MA, November 2025 (Competition)

Screening @ DIOD; 29th Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival (Doc:Alliance), October 2025
Screening @ DIOD; 29th Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival (Doc:Alliance), October 2025, Jihlava, CZ
17 Performers from North Africa & Europe

Siham El Habab, Abir Talibi, Fatima Joudairi, Yassine El Atlassi, Fatima Zahrae, Mehdi Mzaher, Aymane Fares, Nehad Bensalem, Mehdi El Essaadi, Wissal Mrabet, Wiam Baba, Lisa Domin-Alouane, Hannah Wetterich, Laura Engelhardt, Lia Sáile, Katja Rivas Pinzon, Michael Reder

Crew of experimental feminist family film set
Tangier, Morocco

Director: Lia Sáile
Director of photography: Katja Rivas Pinzon
Sound Recording: Laura Engelhardt, Florian Dedek
Directing Assistant on Set: Laura Engelhardt
Children & babies on set: Carla, Nael Ellis
Catering: Michael Reder
Child care: Michael Reder, Florian Dedek

Pre-/Post production crew

Montage: Lia Sáile, Lisa Domin-Alouane

Poster #1 Scattered Sea
Poster #1 Scattered Sea

Sound Design: Jeesoo Hong, Lia Sáile
Foley Sound: Jeesoo Hong
Sound Assistance: Marcel Zaes, Lutz Menzel
VFX: Patrick Buchta, Drew Hamlet, Andres R. Pinzon
Music: Phanton (Springer & Wolff)
Musical Advisor & Narrator: Zemira Sadeh
Color grading: Ewald Hentze
Sound master: Ralf Schipke
Consultancy: Adriana Lemus, Richard Bevan, Lisa Domin-Alouane
Production: Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany, GUEDV Productions, Lia Sáile
Pre- & Post-Production: Fani Schoinopoulou
Support: Live Room, Tangier, MA, Cinémathèque de Tanger, MA, Tentacle & Soundly
Handwritings: Jilan Hosni, Fatima Joudairi, Abir Talibi, Lia Sáile

Production supported in DE and, MA by: Petra Clemens, Henning Marquis, Kasia Paczesniowska-Renner, Christian Turner, Lars Langen, Claudia Warnecke, Hans Huber, Rüdiger Ringier, Sebastian Jaimes Marin, Evelyn Köhnlein, Lutz Mennicken, Gerrit Chee-Caruso, Martin Nawrath, Paul Rousselon, Guillaume Tanhia, Amal

Song: ‘HeartBreath’, generously sponsored by phanton (Michael Springer & Beate Wolff), Cello/Trumpet: Beate Wolf, Bass: Wolfram Burgtorf de Cloedt, Voice: Samuel Springer © 2024 <3

Mentors

Prof. Mischa Kuball, Prof. Dr. Lilian Haberer, Karin Lingnau

Special thanks

Michael with Carla, Dagmar & Jochen, Nela Adam, Martina Taubenberger, Thomas Schmidt, Ayoub Alouane, Nana Tazuke-Steiniger, Pia Greven, Andi Hentschel, Karin Kaçi, Teo Reljic, Mohamed Reda el Abassi, Noel Borg, Marlene Kelnreiter, Gabi Blum, Torsten Büttner, Sascia Bailer, Isabel Praun

Film stills of ‘Scattered Sea’, 2025