THE CAPTAIN'S HEART, 94min., Denmark, Adventure Documentary
Directed by Simon Bang
The director sets out to understand his maternal grandfather, the late Captain Goth (1893-1966). In the process, he had to recreate the ship that was the Captain’s life and great love. Through interviews with his remaining children, mementoes from his old ships chest, photos and archival material mixed with hand-drawn animations, the film depicts a turbulent time in world history through a man willing to defy submarines, mines, bombing and shipwrecks to serve God, King and country. But after 50 years at sea, the new world no longer accords with the Captain's rules, and his heart is not as stubborn as his will. He can keep the world and its wars at bay, but he cannot control his family and their desire for freedom. Nor can he submit to the new world that has arisen from the ashes of the old. Seventeen years in the making, acclaimed storyboard artist and painter Simon Bang in his first feature documentary digs into a painful family story spanning two world wars and a life at sea.

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Director Statement
As a 5-year-old, I stand with my grandfather and look up at the stars. I remember the silence and his big safe hand. In my childhood, I played and drew what my mother told me about her father, who was the captain of a steamship sailing on the seven oceans of the world. It was stories of casualties, wars and storms that my grandfather sailed through without a scratch. He was a real man who managed it all without complaining.

The Captain's Heart is the story of my grandfather Knud Goth. He was a captain in the Danish merchant navy and spent his whole life out on the world's oceans, while he had a wife and three children back home in Denmark. He steered the family out of the sea while controlling the ship and the 30 men on board. By shipping supplies across the globe, he created the basis for trade and progress. Goth is the epitome of the 20th century. The time when the man sacrificed himself in the service of the cause, even if it cost him his life. It was the century when humanity was exposed to two world wars, crises, and revolutions - both technological and social - and my grandfather was a part of it all. When he went to sea as a young boy, it was to survive and ensure a lasting livelihood for him and his family, but he got more home than that.

The man's role was totally changed, as was the rest of the world, and the progress my grandfather had pushed forward now became his worst enemy. When he returned home after the wars, society had changed and his family, whom he had not seen for years, lived their own lives. And everything he had learned about authority, shut up, pace and direction, had now been replaced by conversation, dialogue, agreements, and peace. The world no longer needed men of his kind. All this I became interested in when I inherited his ship's chest, and in his documents, letters, and photos, saw what drama lay untold. Not just about him but about the whole world we have now put behind us. About what we lost and what we have gained, from a time when man was patriarch to today, when man is no longer an obvious power and authority. The material forms the basis of the film Captain's Heart.
I am the narrator of the film, and through my animations I meet again my grandfather Captain Goth, and I stage the fateful moments that created his greatness and fall and thus the story of the "real" type of man in the last century. His two daughters contribute with personal reflections and anecdotes, and unprecedented photos and archive films weave the great story of the sailor, the patriarch, and the captain together into a cinematic narrative. It is a poetic, critical and very personal story that we can all relate to and learn from anyway. We have all had a grandfather or a grandfather whose life we have never really understood, when the men of that time belonged to the silent but powerful generation.