Holding Back the Tide

A movie akin to a pearl hiding within an oyster, Emily Packer’s film is not only an ode to these complicated, bizarre oysters, but also a queer cinematic poem full of beauty and surprises about sea, taste, gender, community, environment, and the fluidity of life itself. Intertwining facts and data with personal experiences, archive material with cinematic tableaux vivants, Holding Back the Tide alters its form and direction in the same way these gender-fluid mollusks change their sex throughout their lives. However, it never loses its focus, its playfulness, its charming cinematic language, succeeding in encompassing so many standpoints, from the ecological to the political, in a beautiful outcome that unfolds before you like a bite-sized captivating cinematic miracle.