What happens when love is no longer enough to tell us what is right?
When the person you’ve spent your life with begins to disappear right in front of you, how do you know what they still understand, what they still want—and when protecting them might mean taking away their freedom?
These are the profoundly difficult questions at the heart of QUEEN AT SEA, a powerful and deeply human new film from writer-director Lance Hammer, starring Academy Award winner Juliette Binoche and the extraordinary Tom Courtenay.
Binoche plays Amanda, a woman who returns to London to be close to her ailing mother, Leslie, played by Anna Calder-Marshall. But what begins as an effort to care for someone she loves becomes an increasingly painful conflict with her stepfather, Martin (Courtenay), over questions of love, consent, and responsibility.
At the center of their struggle is a dilemma neither can easily resolve: When someone can no longer make critical decisions for themselves, who has the right—and the responsibility—to make those decisions for them?
Eighteen years after his acclaimed debut, BALLAST, which earned him the Dramatic Directing Award at Sundance, Hammer returns to feature filmmaking with an extraordinary ensemble that also includes Florence Hunt.
The result is a film of remarkable tenderness and moral complexity, one that refuses easy answers and asks us to consider how even the best intentions can sometimes cause harm.
For our latest INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE conversation, Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge welcome Lance Hammer to discuss the film, his remarkable collaboration with these actors, and the deeply human questions that inspired it.
Join us for a conversation with Lance Hammer about QUEEN AT SEA.
