Ceibo Surf Film

Returning back to Australia in July of 2023, I stumbled on a surf film called Yama- created by Lucy Small and Maddie Meddings that explored the budding women's surf and skate culture in Ghana, Africa.

I felt so passionate to share my story of my time reconnnecting to Ecuador with them and slowly we began to mold a deep concept for their second film.

After many months of pre production, Lucy and Maddie joined me in Ecuador to film throughout the month of January, kicking off our surf film CEIBO.

Join us in supporting our independent documentary during post-production. Contact us on Instagram: ceibosurffilm

"After the success of their critically acclaimed debut film Yama, Lucy Small and Maddie Meddings are for their second collaborative film - this time in the wave rich and biodiverse country of Ecuador.

With a long history of both environmental destruction and fierce resistance, Ecuador’s landscapes are some of the most important and beautiful in the world. Spliced by the Andes Mountains, patchworked by the Amazon rainforest and home to the Galapagos Islands - Ecuador is fascinating and complex. The Galapagos, known as a living museum, remains one of the most fiercely protected regions in the world - the marine reserve is one of the largest in the world and contains one of the richest concentrations of ocean biodiversity.

Oil fields have opened up across the Amazon in ancestral homelands of Indigenous peoples, in projects that have been met by generations of struggle and resistance. In contrast, Ecuador was the first country in the world to give rights to nature in its constitution and in recent groundbreaking news, the Ecuadorian people voted in a referendum to keep fossil fuels in the ground in the most biodiverse region in the world, Yasuni. 

Lucy and Maddie will join professional surfer Pacha Light, who was born in Ecuador to Australian and Ecuadorian parents. Raised for the first years of her life in the Intag Cloud Forest in the Andes, Pacha has environmental activism in her blood. 

The film will explore Pacha’s connection to Ecuador over a four week trip from the place where Pacha was born in Cotacachi, to the Amazon, to the wave rich mainland coastline and finally the Galapagos Islands. Surfer and activist Lucy Small will join Pacha on a journey of identity, connection to nature and the ocean and what it means to make change. Lucy and Pacha will meet with women in each of these key locations - female Indigenous activists on the frontlines of environmental conflict, female surfers on the coastline and women driving the conservation efforts in the Galapagos."