Bangla Surf Girls

Bangla Surf Girls is an immersive documentary that takes us into the heart of Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, where young girls join a local surf club and dare to dream of freedom and escape from a life of drudgery and abuse.

Review from Arthur Student Press

Taking place in Cox’s Bazar, a coastal city in southern Bangladesh, the documentary Bangla Surf Girls shares the harrowing story of a girls surf club struggling to overcome the cultural taboo of women surfing. Documentarian Elizabeth D. Costa follows the lives of Shobe, Aisha and Suma, three teenage girls who are determined to surf despite complicated family dynamics and the restraints of poverty. The oppressive measures waged against these young women create social conditions that are like wading through rubble just to catch the perfect wave.

Bangla Surf Girls isn’t a spectacle of poverty or misogyny or culture. It shows the incredible lives of Suma, Shobe and Aisha in their normal backdrop. It's tempting to pity the girls, as the little grace they have slides past them, but Suma doesn’t dwell on tragedy. After all, they were out traveling and exploring, which is the important takeaway. We all have a soft spot for a coming-of-age story, but unlike genre classics, Bangla Surf Girls leaves the story with frayed ends. Without pushing any righteousness, the documentary shows the honest, sometimes devastating, sometimes inspiring, story of teenage girls navigating the ebbs and flows of their personal dynamics and the Bay of Bengal.

Read the rest of the review from Katie Pedlar here...