Don’t Go to Sea (2018)

Directed by: Sander Burger | 7 minutes | drama, short film | Actors: Julia Akkermans, Johan Leysen

Sander Burger is a versatile filmmaker. With 2007’s ‘Panman: Rhythm of the Palms’, a music film about the rise and fall of Caribbean steel drum player Harry Daniels, he won awards at the Hollywood Black Film Festival and the Brooklyn International Film Festival. Actors Dragan Bakema and Maria Kraakman worked with him in the psychological dramas ‘Olivier etc.’ (2006) and ‘Hunting & Sons.’ (2010), but also the documentary ‘Ik ben Alice’ (2015), about a robot that takes over the care of demented elderly, is on his list of achievements. In addition, he does not turn his hand around for short(er) films. In the context of NTR Kort! Burger translated the collection ‘Don’t go to sea’ by writer Tommy Wieringa into a seven-minute mini-film that has the same title as the book on which it is based. ‘Don’t go to sea’ is a selection from ten years of columns that the successful author of, among others, ‘Joe Speedboot’ published in the daily newspaper De Pers and the literary magazine Hollands Diep. Wieringa’s columns are more short stories than opinion pieces. The title is taken from the closing sentence of the story ‘Ballon’, and that is also the story that Burger ran off with.

Flemish actor Johan Leysen plays in ‘Don’t go to sea’ (2018) a lonely old man who lives quite remote. During a walk he finds a balloon with a card on the side of the ditch. Although the sender’s name has been obscured by the water, it is clear that it must have been a child from kindergarten. Although as a childless man he has no experience with toddlers, he decides to send a letter back. It will be a letter full of wise life lessons, which he has gathered himself with great pain and difficulty. The tone and content of his writing do not correspond directly to the experience of a five-year-old, but that does not mean that they have no value. And they certainly are well-intentioned. ‘Don’t go to sea’ brings together two very different worlds: young and old, a man alone and a whole kindergarten class, someone who is at the end of his life and a whole group that is just getting started. Despite the distance between them, the balloon and consequent letter bring the two together miraculously. The content of the letter is sober and contemplative; because of the down-to-earth tone and the contrast between young and old, it is also witty here and there. Burger, like Wieringa, knows how to keep the tone light despite the melancholy of the letter.

‘Don’t go to sea’ lasts only seven minutes, but in that limited time manages to sketch a sharp contrast between two completely different phases of life. His strength lies mainly in the poetic, reflective content of the old man’s letter to the kindergarten. Wieringa’s text is so strong that the added value of the images is negligible. Because if you have the bundle at home, this short video will not add much more.