Mandø is an island off the coast of Denmark — population 28. As depicted in “As the Tide Comes In,” which made its North American premiere on Friday, March 1 as part of the True/False Film Fest, Mandø is a place detached from reality.

Mandø is a place where the moon is always overhead; a place where rusted military tanks emerge from wheat fields; a place where you can catch fish in muddy puddles on the road; a place where red laser pointers shine menacingly from behind bushes; and the place its inhabitants wait and watch as the ocean’s water rises around them. Mandø is a place as absurd as the ecological disaster it faces. 

“The starting point of my films is a place,” Juan Palacios, one of the film’s directors said in a Q&A. “And then everything builds around this place.”

To guide the viewer through the dreamlike setting, directors Palacios and Sofie Husum Johannesen chose Gregers, the last farmer on the island. In the opening scene, the audience follows Gregers as he sets up a pump in a flooded field, taking a leaking hose over the island’s deficient dyke to pour the flood water back into the sea. 

The scene is bleak, and representative of the islander’s struggles to keep back the elements without the proper equipment. Regardless, it elicited laughter from the audience due to Gregers’ comical demeanor. 

Gregers lives alone in a disorderly house filled with taxidermied animals, mostly waterfowl. His only companion throughout the film is his dog Sif; his wife and child have seemingly quit the island and him. He attempts to get onto the reality TV show, “Farmer Wants a Wife,” a dating show for farmers, but is rejected. He is the youngest inhabitant of the island and appears to be in his mid-40s or older.

Gregers’ isolation is mirrored by the island setting. Mandø is only accessible during the low tide hours of the day. As the tide rises, the road to the mainland is covered. Palacios, who also acts as the film’s cinematographer, buries the characters in extremely wide shots. Their small figures in the wide natural expanses highlight the characters’ isolation in the environment. 

The island’s other inhabitants bide their time. Near the beginning of the film, local resident Mie celebrates her 99th birthday and later her 100th. The town’s birdwatcher, Niels, documents the declining bird population on the island. Gregers and other townsfolk are often dismissive of the effects of climate change, attributing national fear to political strategy and saying that things always change. 

Gregers and his neighbor discuss the government’s inaction in protecting the island, resolving that someone is going to have to die before the government will take action. Tourists come by bus to learn of the 1634 flood, which killed all of the island’s residents, from tour guide Preben. Store owner Ellen and customer Ingeborg discuss the potentially deadly “full moon sickness” that occurs with each new moon. 

The film can seem aimless at times, showing the characters’ inability to effect change for their sinking home. However, tension builds over time. The score by Morten Svenstrup ticks like a clock as the island runs out of time before the storm. The film is soaked through; there are only a handful of shots in the film that do not feature water, whether it be the ocean, puddles, rain, mists or even washing a discarded record in the sink. Every shot looks damp. Interspersed throughout the film are shots of the moon during the day and night as it cycles toward a full moon.

During the Q&A, the directors made note of the film’s heavy narrative structure. If you didn’t know this was a documentary, you could almost mistake it for a fictional work. The film has all the hallmarks of traditional fiction including rich symbolism, third act pay-offs and a linear structure. The directors said that during their three and a half years of shooting, they went into the film with an idea of what they wanted.

“It is a film that is very much written but not scripted,” Palacios said. “All the scenes were very spontaneous, their reactions and everything is very genuine, but the whole structure, it was pretty much written since the beginning.”

At the film’s conclusion, the audience is faced with the death of a character, a new moon that overtakes the screen and inundates the viewers’ ears with white noise and the final coming of the storm. Nothing has changed, no improvements have been made and the inhabitants simply wait. Gregers sits on a hill with Sif tucked under his coat. The winds whip the island as the storm, which looks like a painting, makes its final approach. 

“It’s just a bit of wind,” Gregers says.

Edited by Alex Goldstein | agoldstein@themaneater.com

Copy Edited by Briana Iordan | biordan@themaneater.com

Edited by Scout Hudson | shudson@themaneater.com