The first feature film to come out of Kuwait, The Cruel Sea (Bas Ya Bahar) took some 9 international film festival awards. The story of pearl divers in the Bahrain in Kuwait prior to the discovery of oil, The Cruel Sea focuses on one family's harsh and bitter struggle for survival, a losing battle against the sea. Beautifully filmed, the dramatic story holds up as well as a major contribution to the art of ethnographic cinema, fictionalized and poetic documentary, in the tradition of Robert Flaherty.