Cruise

Cruise, by Ieva Raudsepa, is a story about coming of age. An overnight ferry ride from Riga to Stockholm turns into a metaphor for the transitional space between being a teenager and becoming an adult. Youth is a fleeting phenomenon that is both painful and beautiful, just like the contrast between the trashy interior of the ferry and the beauty of the sea. Trips on the ferry evoke a sort of nostalgia for the present that will soon be past—the sea surrounding the party is magnificent, but it is also a vast nothingness, ready to just swallow us up.

Connecting Eastern and Western Europe, the ferry is popular among young people. Tickets are cheap and it's a good way to get away from their parents' and let themselves go. The ferry provides all kinds of entertainment — karaoke, an evening show with a flamboyant dance performance, gambling halls, a lottery, and a disco hall. The entertainment is sort of cliché and sometimes absurd but its very banality mirrors the awkwardness of what it means to be very young and living in a state of both personal and societal transition.