Eighteen years is an eternity between films, especially when your debut is as quietly extraordinary as “Ballast.” After largely disappearing from the filmmaking landscape, Lance Hammer has finally returned with “Queen at Sea,” a morally thorny family drama about dementia, autonomy, and the painful limits of caregiving.
READ MORE: Deserving Of The Indie-Hype: ‘Ballast’ Is Raw, Visceral And Intense
Juliette Binoche stars as Amanda, whose mother’s rapid cognitive decline forces her and her stepfather to confront an agonizing question: When someone can no longer reliably make decisions in their own best interests, who gets to decide that threshold has been crossed? Tom Courtenay plays Amanda’s stepfather, while Anna Calder-Marshall portrays Leslie, the woman at the center of the family’s escalating crisis. Florence Hunt co-stars.
Hammer wrote, directed, edited, and produced the film, his first feature since 2008’s acclaimed “Ballast.” That Mississippi Delta drama won directing and cinematography prizes at Sundance and earned Hammer an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Director, making his prolonged absence from filmmaking all the more conspicuous. “Queen at Sea” premiered at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear Jury Prize.
In The Playlist’s review, Savina Petkova praised the “special kind of energy” shared by Binoche, Calder-Marshall, and Hunt.
Here’s the film’s official synopsis:
“In Queen at Sea, Amanda (Binoche) and her stepfather (Courtenay) struggle with a moral issue that divides them. Has Amanda’s mother (Calder-Marshall), who is suffering from dementia, lost the ability to make critical decisions in her own best interests? If so, who is responsible—a spouse, a child, an institution—for making that determination? While navigating love and the fragile boundaries between care, protection, and autonomy, increasingly difficult choices need to be made, and repercussions spiral out of control.”
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“Queen at Sea” opens October 30 in New York, followed by a nationwide theatrical rollout on dates to be announced. Watch the trailer below.
