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CRASSH: DRIFTLINES OCEAN FEST 6-9 MAY 2026
Driftlines is a documentary film festival dedicated to stories of resilience, activism, and self-determination across ocean worlds. Bringing together filmmakers and communities from around the globe, the festival showcases lived relationships with the sea through works grounded in self-representation and narrative sovereignty. These films offer powerful counternarratives to mainstream media, challenging dominant systems of knowledge and power while centring the voices of those most intimately connected to ocean environments.
Programme
Wednesday 6 May
- 17:00 – 19:00 Te Puna Ora, The Source of Life (2024, 76 min): Screening and in-person discussion with Director Virginie Tetoofa
Thursday 7 May
- 12:00 – 15:00 Workshop: Environmental Storytelling Against the Grain: Crafting nonlinear narratives through film; Participatory workshop led by Director Virginie Tetoofa
- 17:00 – 19:00 New Boats (2025, 49 min): Screening and discussion with Director Barmmy Boy (joining online)
Saturday 9 May
- 9:30 – 10:00 Coffee & Conversation
- 10:00 – 12:00 The Lost Sea 刪海經 (2014, 69 min): Screening and discussion with Director Hung Chun-Hsiu 洪淳修 (joining online)
- 12:00 – 13:00 Lunch Break (catered)
- 13:00 – 14:30 Shorts Programme: Ocean Pollution and Self-Determination: Pie Dan Lo (2024, 14 min) & Ujjirijavut (2025, 30 min); Screening and discussion with Ujjirijavut Directors James Simonee and Vincent L’Hérault (joining online)
- 14:30 – 15:00 Coffee & Conversation
- 15:00 – 17:00 The Seven Waves (2023, 69 min): Screening and discussion with Director Asma Bseiso (joining online)
Wednesday 6 May
Te Puna Ora: The Source of Life (2024)
6 May, 5-7pm, Cockcroft Lecture Theatre, 14 Pembroke Street, CB2 3QY
Te Puna Ora: The Source of Life follows the intertwined stories of Hinano, Poema, and Anuavai, three women from the island of Mo’orea, as they come together to protect their ancestral lands and waters. Their relationships with the ocean form the heart of the film, rooted in familial bonds, ancestral legends, and the rhythms of daily life. Despite these deep connections, they face systemic exclusion from the very places that sustain them, from daily moments of rupture to state-sanctioned privatization of the coastline. Director Virginie Tetoofa sensitively portrays the lived experiences of these violences, highlighting the intersecting impacts of capitalism and colonialism. As the government supports a hotel expansion on local beaches – in violation of Mo’orea’s Marine Protected Areas – these women lead local efforts to stop construction. Tetoofa threads the myth of Hina, Goddess of the moon, throughout the film, framing Hinano, Poema, and Anuavai’s collective fight for their home as a journey that is both political and sacred.
Director: Virginie Tetoofa (Director)
Languages: French, English (with English subtitles)
Waters and Lands: Pacific Ocean; Mo’orea (French Polynesia)
Runtime: 76 min
Thursday 7 May
Workshop: Environmental Storytelling Against the Grain: Crafting nonlinear narratives through film
7 May, 12-3pm, Edmund Leach Room, Social Anthropology, CB2 3RF
‘Environmental Storytelling Against the Grain’ focuses on non-narrative filmmaking about environmental justice themes. Director Virginie Tetoofa will discuss documentary filmmaking through an Indigenous feminist perspective, highlighting collaborative and relational filmmaking, as well as the intersections between documentary production, environmental knowledge, and political activism. Beginning with the founding of her Polynesian production company Ahi Company, Virginie will offer reflections across different stages of filmmaking. Topics include intellectual property, international collaboration, non-linear narrative development, off-screen production worlds, and pitching new projects. She will share insights from her film Te Puna Ora, the Source of Life (2024), as well as her latest project on deep-sea mining in the Pacific.
This interdisciplinary workshop is designed for postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and Cambridge staff and faculty engaged in issues of environmental justice, ocean sciences, Indigenous representation, and media scholarship and production. Lunch will be available from 12:00 and Virginie’s session will begin at 12:30. Following her presentation, we will open for an informal conversation, where participants are invited to discuss their own research and works-in-progress.
If possible, participants should also attend the public screening and Q&A of Te Puna Ora, the Source of Life the evening before the workshop, to get maximum possible value from the workshop session.
New Boats
7 May, 5-7pm, SG1, Alison Richards Building, CB3 9DP
New Boats portrays the lives of fishers and their families in Tombo, the largest artisanal fishing port in Sierra Leone. Director Barmmy Boy offers a textured portrait of the fishing industry, from the hum of boat engines to the crackling of fish kilns. The film’s title signals the arrival of Chinese and Korean semi-industrial trawlers, whose illegal drag-net fishing practices deplete local fish stocks. These new boats threaten traditional foodways not only in Tombo but across Sierra Leone, driving migration and unraveling Tombo’s social fabric. At the same time, the film’s theme of “new boats” also reflects one family’s collective effort to rebuild a boat after a heavy storm, opening into a larger narrative around the impacts of climate change. Filmed over three years, New Boats shows how the people of Tombo find ways to sustain themselves and their relations amid intersecting forces of economic, social, and political change.
Director: Barmy Boy
Languages: Krio, Temne, English (with English subtitles)
Waters and Lands: Yawri Bay (Gulf of Guinea); Tombo [Sierra Leone]
Runtime: 49 min
Saturday 9 May
The Lost Sea 刪海經 (2014)
9 May, 9.30-12pm, SG1, Alison Richards Building, CB3 9DP
Set on Kinmen, a Taiwanese island just miles off the coast of China, The Lost Sea weaves together the stories of horseshoe crabs and the fishing community of Houfeng Harbor. Director Hung Chun-Hsiu depicts the many ways people and horseshoe crabs share their lives with the sea, through figures such as Hong Teh-sun (洪德舜), a self-taught marine ecologist, and Hong Mu-chu (洪木櫸), a fisherman who practices sustainable net-fishing and fertilizes his garden with horseshoe crab shells. Filmed over seven years, the documentary tells the story of a poorly managed government initiative to construct a commercial port in the harbor. Propelled by cross-strait Taiwan-China politics, capitalist ideologies, and elite economic interests, the port project severs people’s access to the coastline, destroying the horseshoe crabs’ habitat and undermining the livelihoods of local fishermen. Hung adopts a critical lens on coastal governance, examining local entanglements of ecology and politics amid a backdrop of international change.
Director: Hung Chun-Hsiu 洪淳修
Languages: Hokklo, Mandarin (with English subtitles)
Waters and Lands: Houfeng Harbor, Taiwan Strait; Kinmen Island [Taiwan]
Runtime: 69 min
Shorts programme: Ocean Pollution and Self-Determination
9 May, 1-2.30pm, SG1, Alison Richards Building, CB3 9DP
Pie Dan Lo (Black Tide) (2024)
In 2020, the bulk carrier MV Wakashio ran aground off the east coast of Mauritius, releasing nearly 1,000 tons of oil into the Indian Ocean. Pie Dan Lo captures the devastation of this disaster with acute intensity, brought to life through the vivid, hand-painted images of director Kim Yip Tong. This animated film traces the collective response of local communities, as people across Mauritius unite to protect their island and the many human, animal, and plant lives that call it home. The film highlights the umbilical bond between coastal peoples and the sea – a bond both ruptured and renewed in the wake of this catastrophe. Pie Dan Lo is a story of solidarity and communal resilience, a short and powerful critique of systemic failures in environmental governance and the destructive reach of the global petrochemical industry.
Director: Kim Yip Tong
Languages: Mauritian Creole, French, English (with English subtitles)
Waters and Lands: Indian Ocean; Mauritius
Runtime: 14 min
Ujjirijavut (We See Changes) (2025)
Ujjirijavut (We See Changes) shares the first-hand story of James Simonee, an Inuit filmmaker and hunter from Pond Inlet, as he investigates the long-term effects of an iron mine on his community. Simonee studies the layered impacts of industrial development, as new shipping routes disrupt marine life and iron ore dust contaminates fish and marine mammals – vital sources of food for Pond Inlet. The film offers a model of Indigenous-led research, integrating laboratory testing for toxins in marine species with elders’ knowledge and lived observations of environmental change. As the mining company seeks to expand operations, the people of Pond Inlet face a difficult trade-off between employment opportunities and the preservation of Inuit landscapes and lifeways for future generations. Ultimately, Ujjirijavut is a story of resistance and hope, as the community mobilizes to block the mine’s expansion and assert sovereignty over the future of their territory.
Director: James Simonee, Vincent L’Hérault
Languages: Inuktitut, English (with English subtitles)
Waters and Lands: Baffin Bay; Mittimatalik (Pond Inlet) [Canada]
Runtime: 30 min
Closing film: The Seven Waves (2024)
9 May, 3-5pm, SG1, Alison Richards Building, CB3 9DP
The Seven Waves offers a lyrical portrait of Palestinian people’s relationships with the sea, and the complex layers of governance that shape these relations. Director Asma Bseiso shares the stories of Bisan, a young water sports athlete, and her cousin Muhammad, a fisherman and lifeguard working along the Gaza coast. The film follows Bisan’s training and advocacy as one of the few women competing in water sports, situating women’s access to the sea within the broader landscape of Palestinian freedom. Muhammad’s narrative introduces themes of labor and food sovereignty as he works in the sea amid heightened policing from Israeli boats and limited access to the resources needed to fish. As the last film made before the genocide began in 2023, The Seven Waves juxtaposes the daily struggles of coastal life under occupation with the beauty of the Gaza Sea as a spiritual and cultural home for Palestinian lives.
Director: Asma Bseiso
Languages: Arabic (with English subtitles)
Waters and Lands: Gaza Sea; Gaza [Palestine]
Runtime: 69 min