Don’t miss standout documentary ‘We the Surfers’ at the Ocean Film Festival 2025

The Ocean Film Festival 2025 highlights powerful stories on surfing, conservation, cave diving, and the ocean's healing power. Don't miss 'We the Surfers', a standout entry about the growing surf community in Liberia, and how the Robertsport Surf Club uses the ocean for healing

This year’s Ocean Film Festival 2025, on tour in the UK through November, is a great night out for anyone interested in what goes on above, around, and under the water. Though it’s light on sailing, the programme brings powerful films about surfing, oceanography, cave diving, and more to the small screen.

Don’t miss ‘We the Surfers,’ (dir. Arthur Bourbon), the festival’s standout entry on the grassroots surfing community at the Robertsport Surf Club in Liberia.

The film reflects the transformative power of good storytelling for the wider ocean community, and shows the healing power of the oceans in its truest form.

‘We the Surfers’ was the Ocean Film Festival 2025’s best documentary

‘We the Surfers’ is the kind of storytelling other ocean-focused documentaries aspire to. It is well-paced, well-shot, and features compelling interviews.

More importantly, it doesn’t stop at being well-executed; it wants to be useful.

The crux of this film is the work happening off-screen, at the Robertsport Surf Club.

‘The Robertsport Surf Club is not just a sporting initiative, but also an economic and social project,’ says director Arthur Bourbon. ‘It helps the youth access surfing equipment, creates jobs and provides scholarships. This development around tourism and surfing is managed by locals, for locals.’

With the help of funds and equipment (mostly boards) from NGO Protect the Slide and other organisations, Robertsport Surf Club offers scholarships, equipment, and surf therapy to local youths.

It gives local surfers employment, organises beach clean-ups, and offers youth a place to gather and find community and healing through recreation.

‘Surfing is not war, it’s togetherness,’ says Eli Brown, who works and surfs at the club.

It’s also a space in which young girls can practice the sport alongside the boys, gain confidence, and feel empowered.

Liberian women still face marginalisation and rampant domestic abuse, says young surfer Faith Kulu in an interview. The waves are a place they can feel safe, and begin to carve out their own space.

‘We the Surfers,’ shows the ocean’s potential as a force for liberation, empowerment, and healing. Rarely is the transformative power of spending time on the water as clear as it is in this film.

Ocean stories on and off screen

Liberia’s recent history (1989-2003) is a complicated subject matter to integrate into a sports documentary, but ‘We the Surfers’ doesn’t shy away from the task.

It touches on the impact of 20 years of civil war, which devastated the country and saw a quarter of a million deaths and thousands of child soldiers involved.

Among these is Alfred Lomax, whose interviews highlight both the lasting trauma of the conflict, and how surfing has been an escape from it.

Lomax has been included in other surfing documentaries (‘Sliding Liberia’ and ‘Water Get No Enemy,’ predecessor to ‘We the Surfers.’) He gave Anthony Bourdain a surfing lesson in a 2010 episode of Bourdain’s beloved series No Reservations, has appeared on CNN, and is widely recognised as the first surfer of Liberia.

Yet, as the film points out, there is a disconnect between the accolades and on-screen appearances and the reality of his daily life, where he still struggles with the enduring effects of his trauma.

Another on-screen / off-screen disconnect is reflected in Samon Commey, a talented Liberian surfer and hopeful champion, who at the time of filming did not own his own board and sold bracelets on the beach to get by.

Their interviews, like shots of the club’s one-to-watch youth prodigy, Raegan, surfing seamlessly on a plank of unshaped wood, highlight how heroic sports media narratives can often gloss over the daily realities of the very athletes they mean to showcase.

The strength of ‘We the Surfers’ lies exactly in its willingness to engage with this gap. In taking an honest look, the project hopes to support the growth and autonomy of Robertsport Surf Club and to invite surf tourism to Liberia.

It’s a documentary in service of its subject, and not the other way around.

‘We the surfers’ is also available to rent online. Get involved at wethesurfers.com

Other stories from the Ocean Film Festival 2025

The Ocean Film Festival 2025 also highlighted other voices from around the ocean community, and showed passionate individuals whose love for and lives on the ocean may resonate with sailors.

Two ‘outsider’ surfing narratives featuring kooky protagonists show how some surfers live the ocean on their own terms.

In ‘Astronaut in the Ocean’ (Bimarian Films), bodyboarder Shane Ackerman balances his passion for big wave sand with being a crane-operator by day. ‘Let Me Live’ (Keith Malloy) show how big-wave surfer Tom Lowe got started in his small Cornish fishing town.

‘Souls’, featuring legends of the Ocean community like ‘Her Deepness’, oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle and pioneering underwater photographer David Doubilet, got a bunch of big names on screen to talk about conservation, though it did little to add to the conversation. This entry is made for fans already familiar with their individual contributions to the ocean community.

‘Orcas in the Arctic’ (Alexandra Johnston & Harriet Murphy), which plays like an extended commercial for Napapijiri, who sponsored the short, nods to ongoing research activities about the animals.

‘Aquaballet’ (Alex Voyer) is unapologetically aesthetic. Freediver Marianne Aventurier dives gracefully with marine life, set to music.

The real story, however, is the time it must have taken to accumulate those shots of marine life, and to document Aventurier’s interactions with them.

‘Diving into Darkness’ (Nays Baghai) takes a biographical look at cave diving pioneer Jill Heinerth, who has spent her career exploring the earth’s underwater cave and tunnel systems, which she calls its ‘veins.

It’s a motivating spotlight on an eminent female explorer, though hair raising recounts of Heinerth’s close brushes with death do raise the classic question that comes with nature and extreme sports documentaries, of why we feel the need to put ourselves in that position in the first place.

A possible answer comes from photographer David Doubilet in ‘Souls’.

‘It’s curiosity, insatiable curiosity,’ he says plainly. ‘That’s what motivates me, and everyone who works in the sea.’

Curious? Here’s how you can watch the Ocean Film Festival 2025

Catch the Ocean Film Festival 2025 programme to see what else is happening on the water.

The festival is touring the UK through the end of November. For dates near you, visit oceanfilmfestival.co.uk/tickets.

Previous editions of the festival are for rent online at oceanfilmfestival.co.uk/virtual.

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