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World Premiere at the 2022 mountainfilm festival
“In China, our parents are pretty traditional: Study, find a job, start a family. We surfers don’t think that way. We don’t want a boring life.”
— Yingying, 17
As surfing enters the Olympics for the first time in history in 2021, China molds its first generation of surfers at a state-run sports academy. Alex and Lolo, two promising young surfers, navigate adolescence, freedom and their love of the sport.
About the Film
With unprecedented access SURF NATION is a feature-length observational documentary that tells a story beginning in Hainan, China’s southernmost province where hundreds of athletes as young as 9-years-old train as part of the Chinese National Surf team. These young recruits have left their families around the country and are paid to become surfers with Olympic aspirations.
Shot in a tropical paradise with miles of empty beaches, aspiring athletes and their international coaches live in an old hotel that has become the hub of surfing in China. The kids surf and take classes six days a week. The pressure of failure looms over them as weak performance means dismissal. Their Australian coaches teach technique and surfing’s central attribute: individuality, in a culture that demands conformity. Over a period of two years, we follow two of China’s top surfers, Alex and Lolo, as they train with the team, compete and discover what they want their lives to be.
