All around the world and in Europe, surfers started fighting against widely unknown cases of pollution in our seas. The documentary WHITE WAVES tells their stories.
About a special love to the sea.
Suddenly a couple of small plastic rings appear on the beach of Guéthary along the west coast of France. Every day there are more and more, hundreds of thousands. François Verdet rides the waves of this beach all year long. He is shocked. The surfer sees these little plastic things for the first time in his life. Where do they come from? François cannot sleep until he finds out their origin…
Litter, wastewater, industrial products and chemicals – it is all ending up in the sea. This is often happening without anybody hearing anything about it. But there are some people that observe and feel the pollution day by day with their own body: surfers. As soon as there is some swell they grab their board and ride the waves, in winter and summer. Water is their life. And they want to protect it.
Their love of nature and the water gives them the strength to go out, investigate and search for the source of the pollution. They start talking to people who were involved, to politicians and to the industry. They even initiate scientific studies in the sea and in rivers. If necessary they go to court.
They want to surf clean waves again. In some cases they reach their goal – in others the polluters win.
We met the surfers to tell their stories in our documentary WHITE WAVES.
In 2016 the documentary is supposed to be submitted to various contests and international film festivals. Already this year in June and July we will present our trailer at the Surfilmfestibal in San Sebastian and the International Surf Film Festival Anglet.
Since one year we are traveling with our van around Europe to meet surfers fighting against the pollution along their beaches. Traveling on a low-cost basis (sleeping and cooking in our car) to this date we have been financing this project on our own.
However we need to regain some of the money that we borrowed to start the project. And we still need to do more shootings: We want to follow the stories of the surfers continuously – do they succeed with their fights? At the same time we aim to investigate thoroughly and understand the reasons for the pollution in greater detail. Following a professional journalistic approach, we do not only want to talk to the surfers but also to official stakeholders, the industrie, scientists and other involved parties.
So to finish the documentary we need your support – be it to pay for the gas on our trips, to rent a drone for filming and production expenses like music rights.
Expenses in detail:
40% PRODUCTION COSTS
30% SHOOTINGS ALL AROUND EUROPE
25% FILMING EQUIPMENT
2,5% FILM SCORE
2,5% WEBSITE
*Not included: postproduction, distribution, and promotion
If the sum exceeds 20.000 Euro…
If the donations exceed 20.000 Euros we will use the additional funds later for the worldwide distribution of the documentary: Travelling to film & surf festivals, environmental happenings & congresses, and other events.
Why crowdfunding?
Here we would like to explain that we choose crowdfunding as the main financing source of our project, because we want to keep independent of sponsoring, and with this independent in our investigation and the issues we cover in our documentary.
In case that later we will need some additional money next to the crowdfunding, we will choose sponsors that are not directly involved in the subjects of the documentary.