Film Program 2026
Noe Cantaloube’s Homecoming
A film by Eric Wittkopf.
Noé finally returns to his roots in French Polynesia. Unable to travel back for years, this journey marked more than just a trip, it was a long-awaited homecoming. Accompanied by his close friend and videographer Eric Wittkopf, Noé documented the return to the islands that shaped him. Only this time, he is back with his foil. Homecoming is a film about reconnecting with family, culture, and places. It captures daily life on the islands, the raw beauty of French Polynesia, and the deep emotional pull of returning home after time away. This is a story about roots, belonging, and the power of coming back.
Comes in Waves
A documentary by Theda Acha
Some journeys change where you live. Others change forever the way you see the world.
Comes in Waves is an autobiographical documentary built from a personal archive. It emerges from the need to revisit a chapter of life through memory. A decade aboard a sailboat, a life shaped by love, motherhood, the passage of time, and the vastness of the ocean. The sea was always there. More than a backdrop, it becomes a constant presence, a horizon that accompanies, transforms, and, like life itself, is never the same.
Written and directed by Blake McWilliam
Special edition for Our Ocean Film Fest
Frances Ward, a self-professed “Seaweed Nerd” and adventurer, is about to give up everything she’s built in her life to start a kelp farm off the west coast of Canada. SEND KELP follows Frances on an odyssey that brings her into the vast oceans of the Pacific where she intends to build one of the first farms of its kind in British Columbia. But to coax a crop from the wild Pacific, she’ll need help from scientists, wild harvesters, and entrepreneurs who know the challenges and astonishing potential of this miraculous organism. And along the way, she’ll find a glimmer of the hope that seaweed might provide not only for our planet, but for her, too.
Send Kelp
Ephemeros Fleeting Beings
Written and directed by Luca Keller and Julia Baumgartner/ Underwater Lunatics Media
We jump in. A moment of weightlessness before the ocean swallows us whole. Below, the dark waits. And somewhere within it, fleeting beings. They are here. Some things can’t be explained. Only witnessed.
Thresher Shark Dives, Malapascua, Philippines
Created by Sonya Lee, Directed by Sonya Lee and Jon Chiang
Special edition for Our Ocean Film Fest
On a journey inspired by iconic Korean seafood dishes, filmmaker Sonya Lee and journalist Hannah Sung dive into our ocean to explore how culture can inspire ocean conservation.
Our Ocean Table
A documentary by Nanwakolas Council
The creation of a xwax’wana, a traditional canoe, using traditional methods, from a windfall cedar tree high in H’kusam Forest for the first time in more than one hundred years by carvers from We Wai Kai, Wei Wai Kum, and K’ómoks First Nations.
The revitalization of the ancestral practice of xwax’wana (canoe) carving is part of the Nations’ intergenerational forest stewardship strategy, bringing together not only the carvers from the different Nations but knowledge keepers, elders, youth and Indigenous Guardians to help decolonize canoe carving and support connection to lands and waters, community wellbeing, and cultural strength.
Namaxsala- Making New History
Beyond Liberty
Underwater Camera/Edit/Idea: Luca Keller Performance by: Naia Sohl
Beyond Liberty is a cinematic underwater film exploring confinement, transformation, and the quiet moment when everything begins to shift. Set inside a sunken shipwreck, a freediver drifts through darkness, becoming part of her surroundings...until she discovers something unexpected.
A film by Luca Keller
In the Shallows
A film by Peter Mieras
Explore the hidden world beneath the surface in the shallow waters of British Columbia. This captivating local Canadian film reveals the incredible marine life that thrives just below our feet, from familiar creatures to unexpected encounters. A beautiful reminder that you don’t have to go far to discover another world — some of the ocean’s most fascinating stories are right here along our coast.