Stolen Seas

Assembled from three years’ worth of visits to one of the world’s most volatile hot zones, the format of Stolen Seas is as every bit as exciting as its content, raising beguiling questions about how the team managed to acquire the footage so stunningly interwoven by editor Garret Price.

Thymaya Payne's Stolen Seas is a documentary of such ambitious scope that you might need a remote control and a notebook to keep up with it.

What really elevates the film, though, is the crucial context that Payne provides to explain — but not justify — the pirates' actions.

The documentary Stolen Seas is not just a high-energy chronicle of a ship's hijacking; Thymaya Payne's bold debut feature steps back for a view of Somali piracy that's both broader and more incisive than most mainstream news coverage.

The protracted 2008 ship-napping of the CEC Future...is couched in illuminating context.

A documentary that yearns to be an adventure movie, Stolen Seas can't resist drowning its invaluable insights in thundering, drum-heavy music and flashing visuals. Magnificent in its thoroughness and nuance, this dense, multifaceted study of Somali piracy really needs to settle down.

An admirably balanced, wide-ranging look at the phenomenon of Somali high-seas piracy.