Comparisons to the Titanic were frequent among the passengers and crew members who witnessed the sinking of the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia in director Chiara Messineo’s Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea. The documentary takes viewers through the 2012 maritime catastrophe that claimed 32 lives, led to a 16-year prison sentence, and drew global media attention. The film interweaves eyewitness accounts from survivors, cell phone footage taken the night of the tragedy, and translations of the ship’s black box recordings, which expose dangerous decisions made by the captain.
The documentary retraces the Costa Concordia disaster that took place on Jan. 13, 2012. It features interviews with crew members and passengers about what happened as the ship sank off the coast of Italy.
On Jan. 13, 2012, more than 4,000 people set sail aboard the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia from Civitavecchia, Italy, for a grand adventure on the high seas. That same night, however, the ship diverted off course. The Concordia’s captain, Francesco Schettino, had decided to treat a crew member to a sail-by salute past the Tuscan island of Giglio, where the staff member’s family lived. (In a sail-by salute, a ship navigates closer to shore to greet people on land by sounding its horn.) But the impromptu evening detour turned into a nightmare when miscommunications on the bridge resulted in the luxury liner hitting a rock reef off the coast of the island.
As the ship started taking on water and passengers began to panic, the Italian Coast Guard radioed to see if the Concordia needed help. Schettino and the bridge crew minimized the danger by responding that they were simply experiencing a blackout and didn’t request any assistance. It wasn’t until more than an hour after impact — once the ship had taken on so much water that it started to tilt — that the captain gave the order to evacuate passengers to shore. But only the first wave of lifeboats made it to the water safely before the ship’s angle began to hinder the remaining lifeboat drops, causing chaos among the crew and passengers still stuck on board.
On Feb. 11, 2015, Schettino was convicted of manslaughter, causing a maritime accident, and abandoning ship. The Italian courts sentenced him to a total of 16 years of prison time. He’s currently serving out his sentence at Rebibbia Prison in Rome and has exhausted all his appeals as of 2017. In January 2025, Schettino requested “semi-liberty,” which allows prisoners to spend part of their days outside of prison for work or education. However, he withdrew his request a few months later.
Five other cruise ship employees were convicted of manslaughter, negligence, and shipwreck, but served no prison time. Costa Cruises, the parent company of the vessel, paid a €1 million corporate fine (around $1.1 million) and did not face a criminal trial. The company also paid out various settlements to passengers ranging from €11,000 to €92,700.
