Submarine Channel

Last Hijack Interactive lets you experience the murky world of piracy in Somalia through the eyes of a pirate and a captain. It’s their story, but also the story of their families, the journalists, lawyers and negotiators in both Somalia and the West.

Watch the 3-minute walkthrough with the directors

Last Hijack Interactive allows you to uncover the complex realities behind piracy by juxtaposing the western and the Somali points of view. Combining unique live-action video shot on location and animated illustrations, the interactive experience gives the user the opportunity to navigate the real stories of real people. The story builds up to eye witness accounts of an actual hijack, as recounted by the Somalian hijacker Mohammed Nur and a British captain Colin Darch. How can one such event influence an entire society? What’s the global impact of a single hijack?

The interactive experience is the online counterpart to the semi-animated feature length film Last Hijack, directed by Submarine’s Femke Wolting (Another Perfect World) and Tommy Pallotta (A Scanner Darkly, Collapsus). The documentary tells the story from the Somali perspective and focuses on Mohamed, his wife, his family, and the community he lives in.

Last Hijack premiered on February 7th, 2014, when it opened the Panorama Dokumente program at the Berlinale Film Festival.

Data visualizations offer facts and figures on every single hijacked ship since 2008; the history of Somalia from 1860 till now; and the illegal fishing practices by giant trawlers that destroyed the local Somali fishing communities. The two points of view on the ‘Money Flows’ are most revealing, showing that a lot of people and companies in Somalia and the West made a lot of money off the Somali hijacks.