Squid Fleet
2023 · 14m · United States
Directed by Ed Ou, Will N. Miller
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Aboard the vast Chinese squid-fishing fleet off South America, the film enters an opaque, industrial world of high-seas fishing and its human and environmental costs.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone wants to make a 'look at the invisible labor' essay now, but Ou and Miller actually resist the bleeding-heart narration trap—they let the squid fleet's industrial surrealism speak for itself, which is genuinely unsettling in ways most message-driven docs aren't brave enough to sit with.
The formal restraint here is exquisite: these filmmakers understand they're working in the essay-doc lineage of Pennebaker and the Maysles, using observational distance and montage rhythm to construct argument without sentiment, positioning the viewer as witness rather than mourner.
The decision to shoot the fleet's nighttime operations—all those lights, the creatures surfacing into industrial glare—creates a visual register that's simultaneously documentary evidence and dreamscape; that tonal ambiguity does more storytelling work than any voice-over could.
Reviews
The film conjures this sensory overload. The filmmakers sought to offer a more intimate look at the experience of working in such a gruelling job.