High Seas

Two young people meet in a bar in London. Both are Black British, both received scholarships to private schools to which they try to belong. And both are now artists — he, a photographer; she, a dancer. They want to leave their mark on a world that, in turn, seems both to celebrate and reject them.

They fall in love, tenderly and cautiously, but soon begin to feel that, even though they seem destined to stay together, they can be separated by fear and violence, disturbed by forces far beyond those they can control.

Mar Alto is a painfully beautiful love story, a powerful vision of concepts of race and gender. With dazzling intensity and tremendous emotional intelligence, Caleb Azumah Nelson offers a deeply sensitive account of love and everything that nourishes it.