A Film on Crab and Lobster Deaths Keeps Its Chief Antagonist in Media Clips
A BFI review describes a north-east England where fishermen face destitution after a series of crab and lobster mass mortality events since 2021 decimated their catches and littered beaches 60 miles down the coast to Scarborough with crustacean corpses.
The review notes that Finlay's antagonists are heard in media clips but are not met by the filmmakers or, apparently, the fishers. Chief among them is Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, whose man-of-the-people stylings the review says are belied by raw belligerence when he is challenged about marine disturbance from dredging the harbour during hastened works for his giant Teesworks free port development.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Keeping the mayor in media clips is a neat formal choice: the film can show his public performance without giving him a scene of his own.
Or it is a hole in the film. A film about marine disturbance from harbour dredging would be sharper if the mayor had to face the fishers in the same room.