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Overlooked & Underrated Docs & Features
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Maidentrip: Around the World in Two Years Laura Dekker was thirteen when she decided to be the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone. Her father reluctantly agreed, but the dream odyssey was delayed when The Netherlands’ government didn’t.
They spent ten months attempting and failing to wrest custody of Laura from her father.
Laura set out on her boat, "Guppy", at the age of fourteen, took two years, sailed around the world, created a sensation, broke the record, provided most of the footage of this film—and, afterwards, kept on sailing.
Jillian Schlesinger’s “Maidentrip” starts out with that sensational legal battle, then brings the ‘I-can’t-believe-what-I’m-seeing’ viewer on Dekker’s astounding voyage. As I write these words, I still can’t believe it. Compare the rough outline of an 82-minute film to two years alone on the high seas, visiting distant shores around the world. The character and her odyssey are equally fascinating, jaw-dropping.
And what a gargantuan task Schlesinger and veteran editor Penelope Falk took on in making this documentary film. Dekker’s journey and this film confront each of us with our perceived limits of what is humanly possible, and, especially, what potentials our youth carry in their bodies and minds.