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In director Domien Huyghe’s feature debut, Zeevonk (Sea Sparkle), a teenage girl sets out to prove that a gigantic sea creature is to blame for a fishing expedition that ends in tragedy.
Lena (Saar Rogiers) loves the ocean. Living in a coastal town, she’s an avid young sailor who idolizes her seafaring father, the captain of a fishing vessel who is beloved by the community and famous for his nautical skills. Through Lena’s perspective we see her and her family embraced in a warm, tight-knit community with generational friendships.
Everything changes overnight when Lena’s father and his crew don’t return from sea, sending shockwaves through the community. In their search for answers, some agree that it was simply a tragic accident while others whisper that Lena’s father was reckless to lead an expedition in stormy conditions. Lena is adamant it could not have been her father’s fault, and when she spots a huge shadow lurking beneath the waves, she sets out to prove that it was a gigantic sea creature who caused the accident.
Lena’s best friend Kaz (Dunia Elwaleed) also lost her father in the accident, but the two friends struggle to help each other through their shared grief because they have very different processes. Lena is angry at losing her father and still somewhat in denial, and uses her hunt for the sea creature as an outlet for her pain. She tries to enlist Kaz’s help and can’t understand why Kaz is uninterested. Meanwhile, Kaz is working to accept that her father is gone and wants to celebrate and cherish the times they had together; she makes a scrapbook of memories that she is keen to share with Lena, but Lena can’t bring herself to look at it. With neither friend able to support the other in the way they need, their friendship suffers and they spend time apart.
Finding herself alone and in need of an ally, Lena befriends Vincent (Sverre Rous), a boy who works at the local sea creature museum. He provides Lena with information about ocean migration that supports her theory. Together, they find more proof of the sea creature’s existence: a huge tooth stuck in a piece of driftwood. This spurs Lena onward, and she leads Vincent on increasingly risky adventures. It’s not all smooth sailing, as they encounter setbacks along the way including ones that test their newfound friendship.
Lena is further inflamed by her own family’s lack of support as her brother turns to his girlfriend for comfort instead, and their mother rebukes Lena for scaring her little sister with stories of a sea monster. Unlike Lena, her family has accepted they’ll never know what happened in the accident; the sea is unpredictable, and even the saltiest sailors can still run afoul of it.
With the sea creature finally, possibly, within Lena’s sights, it will take the help of both Vincent and Kaz on one final dangerous mission to find out, once and for all, whether the sea creature truly exists.
Written by Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem and Wendy Huyghe from a story by Wendy and Domien Huyghe, Sea Sparkle is a coming-of-age drama about loss that empathetically explores the many different ways grief can be expressed. Lena is a spirited young teen with a confident exterior cracked open by the loss of her father, and her grief manifests as rage directed largely at the sea.
The idea of the sea creature works well as both a narrative tool and personal outlet for Lena; it’s her journey of coming to terms with her father’s death. Whether or not she finds the creature, you’ll have to watch to find out. That said, the film strikes a balance of providing some closure without offering conclusive answers.
Sea Sparkle has its world premiere at this year’s Berlinale as part of the Generation Kplus section, which features contemporary films exploring the lives and worlds of children and teenagers as seen through their perspectives.
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