Presented in a world premiere within the Geneva International Film Festival’s Highlights section and broadcasting in Switzerland on RTS and the app Play RTS since 21 November, the four-episode mini-series En haute mer oscillates between a detective movie and a psychological thriller, between tension and mind games. A loose adaptation of Fabien Feissli’s novel En eau salée, the series puts the audience through the ringer with its complicated yet captivating story and ambiguous, troubling characters.

Julia (Isaline Prévost Radeff), the series’ protagonist, hasn’t made contact since she set off on a mysterious cargo ship. Her partner, Florian (Maël Cordier), is starting to worry, but he manages to blag himself a job on the boat with the idea of finding out where Julia is and, above all, getting to the bottom of what happened on that mysterious cargo ship. Unfortunately, his plan is thwarted because he’s rapidly accused of a murder he denies committing.

Aurélie (Maud Wyler), an inspector for the Genevan police, is in charge of sending the young man back home, a man with whom she’s had involvement in the past. She’s convinced the captain and his crew are hiding something and that Julia’s disappearance is connected to these secrets. Thus, Aurélia finds herself investigating Julia’s strange disappearance as well as a murder. Trusting her instincts, Aurélia doesn’t yet know that she’s opened a door onto a troubling, hellish world which sucks in and imprisons all who venture into it. The tension becomes heavier with every episode and the truth isn’t what they’d imagined when it eventually comes to light. The financial machinations which initially seemed to motivate the characters evaporate before the audience’s eyes, like mist.

A suffocating atmosphere, a story which seems impossible to get to grips with, and endless plot twists: these ingredients make for a series which knows how to play with the codes of psychological thrillers. The characters are also one of the movie’s strengths: whether it’s the inspector who’ll do anything to uncover the truth, the captain (Michael Neuenschwander) who seems so sincere, the worried boyfriend or the mysterious missing woman, each of them has a little darkness within them. Shot between Geneva and Bilbao, En haut de mer takes us inside the private rooms of international Geneva, but it also leads us inside the secret world of the Swiss merchant navy, and that’s where the series becomes particularly interesting. The decor on board the cargo ship is astonishing: enormous spaces dominated by stairways, decks on different levels, piping systems which look like ready-made works of art… But, most importantly, there’s the ocean, a metaphor, of sorts, for the characters’ state of mind, caught between a search for freedom and secrets which are difficult to hide.

En haute mer was produced by Alva Film, Gatz Kalea Filmeak A.I.E. and RTS Radio Télévision Suisse.