Val Sebald is an author who comes to the Island to retreat from life and land. There he lives among the islanders and his favorite women, the heroines of various maritime novels. His relations with actual women from his past are reduced to messages in bottles that he ceremonially throws into the water. Val brings the real and imaginary people together into a place he is comfortable with, while his real life also becomes more and more one with the sea and the underwater world.

The Sea at the Time of the Eclipse

A man stays alone with his children in a half demolished house in the middle of a desolate field. His wife has just been killed by a grenade in a military battle. He is expecting a new attack. Instead a wandering caravan called Circus Fantasticus stops by the house. They bring along the dying director of the circus. Is it possible for anything beautiful to happen in a landscape of war and death? Can life go on? Is it possible to realize that death does not exist?