Kekoa
2020 · 30m · USA
Directed by Chris Murphy, Zach Johaneson
Genres: adventure, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
After Hurricane Irma devastates St. John, brothers Jamison and Ryan Witbeck set out to repair Kekoa, the hand-built catamaran that survived.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a hurricane-recovery doc that could've been a flat insurance claim, but Murphy and Johaneson refuse the disaster-porn angle—instead they're making a film about two brothers talking to a boat, which is either profound or pretentious, and I'm genuinely not sure which.
The restraint here is the whole thing: a 30-minute meditation on repair and resilience that trusts the vernacular poetry of manual labor and salt-worn wood, positioning itself quietly in the lineage of observational documentary that knows when to stay still.
The decision to make the catamaran itself the emotional anchor rather than the hurricane—letting the brothers' labor and dialogue do all the heavy lifting while the camera simply witnesses—transforms what could've been a travel-adventure into something that feels genuinely earned and intimate on no money at all.