‘Boatbuilders’ review: Luke Lorentzen’s Maine-set boatyard documentary is a finely crafted delight

Dir: Luke Lorentzen. USA. 2026. 103 mins.

In a small town in coastal Maine, the Brooklin Boat Yard is more than just a place of work. It’s an integral part of a community which spends much of its time in, on or under the chilly North Atlantic waters. It’s a place where generations’ worth of knowledge, skills and craftsmanship are nurtured and passed on. And it’s a place where some of the finest boats in the world are built for clients so eye-wateringly rich, it’s hard to imagine that they can fully grasp the long months of meticulous labour that go into each shiny new plaything. Luke Lorentzen’s serenely fascinating observational documentary follows, over 16 months, the bespoke construction of a 56-foot wooden sailing yacht. It’s a quiet delight of a film, which, in its unassuming way, feels almost profound at a time when much of the world seems eager to outsource its creative endeavours to machines.

A quiet delight which feels almost profound

Just as the serious, diligent men in the boatyard draw upon skills which have been honed over years by past masters of their craft, so Lorentzen draws on obvious influences from an earlier generation of documentarians. The combination of puckish curiosity and patience characteristic of Frederick Wiseman’s pictures is evident here, and Lorentzen also cites Les Blank as a reference point. It’s a change of both tone and pace for the director, whose previous multi-award-winning pictures have tended to focus on heightened, life-and-death dramatic stakes: Midnight Family followed a family-run private ambulance in Mexico City; the Sundance-winning A Still Small Voice focused on end-of-life care and an aspiring hospital chaplain. Boatbuilders, meanwhile, is a calmer, more meditative piece which should float the boats of audiences that responded to films like Truffle Hunters and Honeyland following its premiere out of competition in Venice

Like the men it follows (this is very much still a predominantly male working environment), the film is unshowy and thoughtful. If not quite slow cinema, it’s certainly located in the same area code. This is filmmaking which gives us time and space to appreciate the rhythms of life, both in the boatyard (there’s a pleasing repeated motif of cards punched as the workers clock in) and in the cycling seasons. We get glimpses of life outside of the yard – a hypnotic shot of someone carefully drilling a hole in the ice; gruff men sorting through the lobster catch, kids scrumping apples.

A lilting, rippling woodwind interlude in the score accompanies the transition between seasons – sequences showing a puttering ride-on lawnmower and meadow flowers give way to atmospheric shots of autumn mist clinging to the water. Lorentzen, who shot the film himself with a handheld camera, uses a tight aspect ratio for the kind of landscape which would normally invite an expansive widescreen approach. But the choice is astute: there’s an intimacy and focus on detail in the photography which mirrors that of the boatbuilding work at the film’s heart.

In the timber-filled boatyard itself, with its warm tawny light, two characters come to the fore. One is the silver-haired, avuncular president of the boatyard, Brian. He’s the kind of boss who gives up his spare time to carefully portion up and marinate meat for a boatyard barbecue; who is aware of the pivotal role that the yard plays in the wider community and the responsibilities that brings. The other is the calmly authoritative project manager, Trent, who handles planks of seasoned wood with the same tenderness and care that he shows when he holds his newborn baby daughter.

The star of the film, however, is the boat herself: with her sleek forest green hull, polished chrome hardware and a wheel so elegantly tooled, it looks like a piece of Danish mid-century furniture. The yacht, Kiandra, is a beauty – almost as much a work of art as she is a racing sailboat. The strong, silent men of the boatyard sip their beers in the sun as they hand her over to her owner, a well-heeled financial adviser. Then they buckle down and move on to the next project.