Far Tortuga is Peter Matthiessen’s forgotten masterpiece of fiction. Another World Entire is working to adapt the book into a psychological thriller feature film to be shot on location in Belize over 2022-23. The story is a visceral, mythic dive into cultural perspectives on fear and belief, set in a wilderness that is storymaking depicted with authenticity on-screen.
In 1968, nine men from Grand Cayman, all with different ethnic backgrounds, united only by their poverty and survival instincts, sign on to a late-season turtle-fishing expedition with the hopes of fleeing the islands. Both captain and ship are behind the times and ill-equipped to weather ominous waters. The sailors bring their heady superstitions from nine different angles of a Creole culture, and as ill portents surface they debate their fate while measuring each other’s trustworthiness, slowly learning of each other’s pasts. Fear begets fear, though, and never eclipses the vital power of the natural world.
“With its strange and haunting locutions, Far Tortuga will certainly point the way that the English-speaking sensibility must and should go … Matthiessen is creating our new vision.”
– James Dickey
This film will be made in-house by Another World Entire. We see this as an opportunity to make a landmark, classic film on a low budget, leaning into our team’s unique experience with artmaking in challenging, foreign environments. With it, we intend to establish our reputation for making the keenest and most viscerally resonant films about the wild lives of the world in our strange cultural present.
