All Is Lost

All Is Lost is a 2013 survival drama film written and directed by J. C. Chandor. The film stars Robert Redford as a man lost at sea. Redford is the only cast member, and the film has only 51 spoken English words. All Is Lost is Chandor's second feature film, following his 2011 debut Margin Call. It screened Out of Competition at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

The title of the film is a nod to E. W. Hornung's observation that when courage is lost, "all is lost".

Among many honors, the film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound Editing (Steve Boeddeker and Richard Hymns) and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score (Alex Ebert). Redford was nominated for his own Golden Globe and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor.

Plot

A man narrates a letter addressing people he will miss.

In the Indian Ocean eight days earlier, the man wakes to find water flooding his boat. It has collided with a wayward shipping container, ripping a hole in the hull. The man uses a sea anchor to dislodge the container, then changes course to tilt the boat away from the hole. He patches the hole and uses a manual bilge pump to remove the water from the cabin. The boat's navigational and communications systems have been damaged by saltwater intrusion. The man tries to repair the marine radio and connects it to one of the boat's batteries. When he climbs the mast to repair an antenna lead, he sees an oncoming tropical storm.