Francis is a reclusive older homeless man who lives in a tent on a suburban beach. Every morning he plunges into the ocean. Every day he uses his free travel pass to take the train into the city centre to beg. Every evening on his way back to the beach he buys food and beer to consume alone as the sun sets.

One day his carefully developed routine is thrown upside down when he spots a young woman Nadia jumping into the river in the city. He instinctively dives in to save her. The rescue is filmed by a passer-by – turning Francis into a media hero and then, quite quickly, an object of suspicion and hatred. He ends up being burnt out of his tent.

When they hear about his plight, Nadia’s well-to-do parents offer Francis the use of the vacant cassita attached to their prosperous gated home. But Francis struggles to adapt to indoor life, and his disruptive presence threatens the fragile dynamic of his traumatized host family – especially when it emerges that he’s served prison time for the manslaughter of his own wife and has a grown daughter whom he hasn’t seen since she was a child.

Can we ever really fix other people? Can we ever really fix ourselves? The Sea Lion has no easy answers – but it does offer humanity, humour, heartbreak – and just a little hope.