Cutter Hodierne

I think the guys who are sort of infantry in Somali piracy are not unlike low-level drug dealers in urban areas in America, who see it as, you know, not having many other options. I think it comes down to money and needing to survive.

I couldn't be happier teaming up to make the feature with a company as innovative as VICE. There is so much the world doesn't know about piracy in Somalia and the people involved, and I'm excited to be telling a story of piracy in Somalia from a different perspective.

I started to work on a feature-length script about pirates in Somalia, but I knew that there was something I was missing, which was that I didn't know what day-to-day life looked like and felt like in East Africa. So I decided I had to go.