Bon Voyage: Director Jillian Schlesinger on her “Maidentrip”

While Robert Redford (star of J.C. Chandor’s “All Is Lost”) and Tom Hanks (playing the titular “Captain Phillips” in Paul Greengrass’s latest) are surely setting their compasses in the direction of Oscar right about now, American filmmaker Jillian Schlesinger has found a smaller fish – with an equally tailored-for-Hollywood tale – to fry. Schlesinger’s “Maidentrip,” made in collaboration with her photogenic and charismatic teenage subject, is the real-life story of the remarkable Dutch sailor Laura Dekker, who in January 2012 at age 16, fulfilled her dream to become “the youngest ever to sail around the world alone.” Combining footage shot at Dekker’s stops along the two-year journey with that of the solo sailor’s own video and voice recordings made on her good ketch Guppy, Schlesinger and her all-female team of filmmakers have given us what amounts to a refreshing nonfiction antidote to this season’s seasoned-men-at-sea flicks. Schlesinger spoke with Global Comment prior to the film’s January 17th opening at the IFC Center in NYC.



To read my interview visit Global Comment.