Though its aftertitles detailing the history of French nuke experiments suggest otherwise, writer/director Marion Hänsel’s Black Ocean is not a political treatise or a history lesson, instead taking advantage of the remote, isolated environments in which the experimentation took place – as well as the monumental imagery of the act itself – in order to communicate a more universal story about the power of awe. Ocean principally follows three young sailors on a French naval vessel in 1972, who are on course for an unknown destination in order to help carry out the bomb tests they’ve yet to personally witness. The film is essentially divided into two parts: before and after the blast.

Seeking for his dog mysteriously disappeared, a lonely thirty-year-old paces up and down the streets of his repressed past. When his long-lost half-brother intrudes the investigation, they improvise a few steps drifting together into the night. A night too short to solve all the mysteries and too long to let the silence of memories prevail.

After 10 years of struggle in Paris, Emma Peeters has to face the facts: she will never be an actress. She decides to commit suicide on her 35th birthday. That is when she meets Alex, a funeral home employee.