Film Overview: Women & The Wind

It’s tough to make a crusing movie. The situations at sea are onerous on cameras (and digital camera operators), there are quite a lot of technical issues that filmmakers are likely to get fallacious, and the viewers is comparatively small for a business launch. We’ve acquired a pair good ones and much more dangerous ones. There’s Wind, Adrift, Morning Light, Maiden, All is Lost, Deep Water, Mercy…I’ll allow you to resolve that are which. 

My level is, there are few sufficient of them that I at all times take discover when one thing new comes out. Women & The Wind didn’t solely catch my consideration, although. Hundreds of 1000’s of individuals tuned in to look at on social media as Kiana Weltzien and her ragtag crew—consisting of a beginner sailor and a camerawoman—spent a month working their wood catamaran, Mara Noka, westward throughout the Atlantic. 

Though at instances suspenseful, the movie is a delicate and meditative journey throughout the ocean, harking back to a bygone period of crusing. The dreamy, nostalgic cinematography units the scene, however it’s the low-tech, barebores journey of some younger individuals with an enormous dream that basically looks like one thing plucked straight from yesteryear. 

Another factor from yesteryear? Their security requirements. Viewers beware, there are few life jackets or tethers within the movie. (Before the emails begin pouring in: this overview doesn’t represent an endorsement from SAIL of the laissez faire strategy.) And in case you have been planning to look at it in combined firm, yet one more warning that there’s additionally various nudity. It’s not graphic, however I additionally wouldn’t put it on for youth sailors ready out a rain delay.

The boat, a Wharram Narai MKI from the Nineteen Seventies, is a little bit of a wreck from the beginning. Despite surviving many bluewater miles with Kiana alone aboard, there was work to be carried out earlier than she felt she might danger different individuals’s lives on it. In reality, the choice to sail with others in any respect was a considerably tough one for her. 

Kiana’s younger maturity had been pushed by one objective: work as onerous as she presumably might in order that she might cease working as quickly as she presumably might. But issues don’t at all times go to plan, and after a number of years within the rat race, she defected from metropolis life and realized to sail with a mentor aboard one other Wharram cat. 

“I had this list of what I’d want in a boat of my own, and it was basically just the boat he already had,” Kiana says. “I wanted something so specific that I figured I didn’t have to worry about actually finding it.” But the world has a humorous means of giving us what we’d like, and Mara Noka was proper across the nook.  

After quite a few passages, Kiana was struck by the air pollution she encountered even in essentially the most distant elements of the ocean. “Personally, the motivation for making this film came from witnessing the reality of ocean plastic pollution during my first Atlantic crossing, and that its effects float on well beyond our shores. I wanted to take on that voyage again, but this time I wanted to bring along a team,” she says.

“The North Atlantic also provides the perfect environment for a very intense and spiritual journey, as that stretch of ocean can quickly become hostile. I knew these elements, mixed with a women-only crew aboard a simple wooden craft, would provide the perfect ingredients for an engaging and captivating film. Though the focus for my initial vision of the film’s message changed, as it was difficult to survive storms and capture imagery of trash at sea at the same time, the essence still remained the same.” 

Equal elements artwork and journey, the movie is a love letter to the ocean and an homage to the connection that individuals have with the ocean, for higher or worse. Kiana says she needs it to, “evoke a desire in the viewer to follow their gut, adventure throughout this world, and become more conscious of how some of our smallest decisions can have a great impact on our own lives and the planet.”

In the wake of the large response from the group, Kiana has began the Women & The Wind Foundation, which goals to help different younger girls with environmentally-driven adventures, significantly these which are unorthodox sufficient to battle with fundraising or insurance coverage. 50% of proceeds from the movie will go to the fund, and she or he hopes to ultimately incorporate a mentorship program as properly.

The movie was launched digitally on January 1. Visit womenandthewind.com to look at or study extra in regards to the mission. 

January/February 2026