Written and directed by Lucas Martell

In a future where water is a precious commodity, Katrina has done the impossible: discovered how to make it rain. In a battered plane with a cobbled together cloud engine, she faces off against air pirates and the status quo.

Available on YouTube, The OceanMaker is one of those short movies where every frame tells the story. This is our world but not… quite. Katrina’s plane is vintage but has been re-built. The shanty town built up around a beached nuclear submarine has obviously been there a while. There’s a sense of the world being quiet, and quiet for a while. That re-casts Katrina into something more mythical than a lone genius in a dying plane. Instead she’s a catalyst for change, the new world refusing to back down even in the face of overwhelming, impossible odds.

That tone is built on by just how embattled Katrina is. Her plane barely works as the movie opens and she only ever takes more damage. This feels like a world on the edge and Katrina is the only one trying to haul it away from that edge. She gets victories and they’re joyous and absolute and completely fragile. The genius of what Martell does here is use those victories to show how the world has changed. If water is rare, water is precious and if it’s precious then it’s valuable. The water pirates we meet are terrifying both for their ruthlessness and their resources.

Martell’s team have designed a weird and very plausible moisture farming technique that adds weight to the action sequences as well. It also makes the ending especially poignant, as Katrina faces off against a reconditioned jetliner, thundering with prop engines and gun turrets. Katrina’s terrified, so are you and as the movie ends you realize where it’s going even as you hope it doesn’t. When it does, Martell and team have one more visual left that ends the movie on a perfect note, even as the story itself gets ready to continue,

Verdict: The OceanMaker is beautiful and wears its heart on its sleeve. Martell and team have done the near impossible and created a world that’s familiar, alien, fragile, brutal and beautiful. Ten minutes long, fizzing with invention and worth every second. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

The OceanMaker is on YouTube now