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THE RED SAIL

By Wendy HILL-TOUT

True Story - Development 2023

THE RED SAIL is based on a true story, is about a woman, Cate, who goes searching for her lost brother only to find herself.

- Year of production
- 2023
- Genres
- True Story, Female director, Drama
- Countries
- IRELAND, CANADA
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Budget
- 3 - 5 M$
- Duration
- 90 mn
- Director(s)
- Wendy HILL-TOUT
- Writer(s)
- Wendy HILL-TOUT, Cathy OSTLERE
- Synopsis
- THE RED SAIL is based on the book LOST: A MEMOIR, a true story about the author’s brother who disappeared at sea with his British girlfriend Sarah. The story is truly an international film set in Alberta, Winnipeg, Madeira, Ireland and Scotland. The film uses landscape as character, the sweeping and stunning Irish seaside, the Rocky Mountains, the prairies, and the lushness of Madeira.
  
  When Cate’s brother fails to call home on his birthday, Cate’s is the only one who knows his secret. He is on a voyage from Ireland to Madeira in a small boat, the Mugwump. When days, and even weeks slip by, with no word of him from anyone, Cate finally tells the truth to her parents, and decides to go to Madeira to search for him.
  
  Leaving her husband (who has recently survived cancer), and 3 young children behind, Cate shows up on the island, only to find no one has seen or heard any sign of him.
  
  As the desperate days go by, Cate walks the docks talking to sailors, and handing our posters, staying on a boat with a captain named Joe. But it is in Madeira she realizes she is the one who is lost, trapped in a passionless marriage, while her adventurous brother sailed around the world.
  
  When Cate, meets a sailor from England, who rekindles the passion of her youth, something is changed in her. And when the Port Captain tells her, he has reports of a storm at sea, during the time David and Sarah were sailing, she knows her brother is likely dead.
  
  She returns to Canada, dead inside, and her husband, Sam, has a dream. He starts a hotel in a frozen but beautiful wasteland in the mountains, where she goes through the grief, and numbness of losing her best friend, and beloved brother. But their marriage is failing, and Cate can no longer forget who she is, and who she once one, as a young woman when she was passionately in love with a sailor.
  
  A year later Cate, still unable to say good-bye to her brother, and unable to accept he is gone (in Ireland it’s called Away – lost at sea), Cate returns to his home in Scotland, and to Ireland, the last place her brother saw land. Recounting his steps and his days, it is in Scotland and Ireland, that Cate finally comes to peace.
  
  THE RED SAIL is a story of longing, hope, and one woman’s love for her brother. It is a story that will touch anyone who has ever wanted to live and breathe every moment of their life.