Styx

Premiering at the Berlinale, where it opened the Panorama Special section, Styx is a work of unrelenting intensity and technical brilliance. ER doctor Rike (Susanne Wolff) embarks on a one-woman solo sailing trip to Ascension Island in the Atlantic. When Rike comes across a sinking ship of refugees, she is quickly torn out of her contented and idealized world and must make a momentous decision. Aptly named after the mythological river that separates the living from the dead, Styx is an astute modern day parable of Western indifference in the face of marginalized suffering. Carrying practically the entire film, Wolff is riveting as a woman pushed to her physical, psychological and moral limits.