November 1984. Two Swedish girls in a small rowing boat mysteriously disappear on the Baltic Sea. Drifting around for 48 hours the two close friends witness a cold war military secret that would change their lives forever.
During the peak of the cold war two nineteen year old girls bump into a submarine in Swedish territorial waters.
After 48 hours they are rescued by a Soviet cargo ship. Hours later they are handed over to people who were part of a massive and ongoing Swedish rescue operation. After extensive interrogations by the Swedish military the girls are instructed that the submarine encounter is a classified state secret.
34 years later one of the girls, Helena Af Klercker, is given permission to receive a copy of the top secret document that reveals what happened. However, large parts of the information in the document have been masked. In the aftermath the Swedish military extends the top secret classification from 35 to 70 years.
After extensive research both in Russia and Sweden, directors Petter Hansson and Helena Af Klercker have managed to record hours of highly classified material that points towards a real hero of this incident - an unknown Russian submarine captain who took the decision to rescue the girls from a certain death.
Secret Sea is a visually striking and highly engaging account of this classified top secret encounter during the heights of a Cold War, a lifelong friendship and an extensive search for an unknown hero.