A poetic documentary that traces the origins of writer Mark Anthony Thomas’s creative voice. Through a cast of actors, a young featured poet, and rarely seen historical footage, the film revisits the poems that shaped his early years and the questions that still echo decades later. Blending performance, memory, and cultural history, In Need of Seawater becomes a meditation on personal becoming—how identity is forged through trials, loss, and revelation—and how one artist’s search for truth mirrors America’s ongoing fight for expression, dignity, and justice.