A year ago, two friends had a conversation about surfing in Ghana.
It was a pretty niche topic.
Lucia, originally from Miami and living in Madrid, had recently been in Ghana through the NGO she works for. During her time there, she had heard about a growing surfing community along the country's coast. When she returned to Madrid and met Guillermo, from Spain, the two started talking about it.
What was happening there?
Who were these surfers?
And what did surfing look like in a country that most people would not immediately associate with surf culture?
Then they started seeing videos.
Some of them showed Ghanaian kids riding waves on wooden boards that looked almost like house doors. There was something about it that immediately caught their attention. It was raw, unexpected and inspiring.
The idea of making a documentary about these surfers started to take shape.
But for a while, it stayed in the back of their minds.
Being ready is not a state. It's a decision.
Eventually, they decided to have weekly meetings to move the idea forward. They brainstormed, researched Ghana's surf scene and started reaching out to potential contacts through a brand-new Instagram account they had created for the project. They even posted a video calling for participants.
Little by little, a few contacts began to appear.
They had some people they wanted to speak to and a rough idea of the story they wanted to explore.
There was just one problem.
They needed to go there.
And they needed someone who actually knew how to use a camera.
The two of them knew very little about filmmaking equipment.
Shutter speed? ISO?
What is that?
That is where their friend Manuel, from Germany, came into play.
Together, Lucia, Guillermo and Manuel decided to make the trip to Ghana.
They arrived with cameras, microphones, a few contacts and a lot of questions.
But they quickly discovered that the story they had imagined from Europe was only the beginning.
Arriving in Ghana
The plan was relatively simple: meet people from the surf community, hear their stories and understand what surfing meant to them.
But once they arrived, the project began to take on a life of its own.
Almost everyone they met wanted to be part of it.
People introduced them to friends. Surfers told them about other surfers they needed to meet. Conversations that were supposed to last twenty minutes turned into much longer encounters.
The three travelled to Kokrobite and Busua, two coastal communities where surfing has had a strong impact in recent years and where many of Ghana's best surfers can be found.
What surprised them was how much more surfing represented than simply a sport.
The communities had attracted people from other parts of Ghana as well as visitors from abroad. Around the waves, a strong sense of community had developed.
Young people were learning to surf, experienced surfers were sharing their knowledge and a skill that might once have seemed inaccessible was becoming something children could learn, practise and eventually teach themselves.
For the three filmmakers, this was the first major discovery of the trip.
They had come looking for surfers.
They found a community.
The Girls of Busua
One of the most memorable stories they encountered was in Busua.
The filmmakers heard that girls in the community traditionally aren't allowed to enter the water unless they have their grandfather's blessing.
It was a detail that immediately made them think differently about what access to the ocean can mean.
Then they met the young girls at Justice's Brothers Surf School.
The surf school is creating an opportunity for girls to learn how to surf and become comfortable in the water. The three filmmakers were able to meet and interview some of them and, more importantly, watch them surf.
What they saw went beyond learning how to ride a wave.
For these girls, learning to surf was already giving them confidence and self-esteem at a very young age.
There was something powerful about watching them enter the water, try something difficult, fall and get back on the board.
The board became more than a piece of sporting equipment.
It became a tool for independence.
And this was another reason why the filmmakers began to see surfing in Ghana differently.
The value of a wave wasn't necessarily measured by how good the wave was.
It could be measured by what happened to the person riding it.
The People Behind the Waves
As the journey continued, the three filmmakers began meeting more and more people who were shaping Ghana's surf culture.
They met Big Ben, Ghana's National Surfing Coach, and some of the country's top surfers. Through them, they saw the effort that goes into developing young talent and helping surfers improve their skills and compete at a higher level.
They also met Mr Bright, whose surf shop in Kokrobite has become an important part of the local surf scene. Through him, they learned about his collaboration with Provide the Slide, an organisation that helps bring surfboards and equipment to communities in West Africa.
They also met Sandy Alibo, founder of Surf Ghana, and learned about her work using surfing and skateboarding to create opportunities for young people and strengthen Ghana's board-sports community.
Each person gave them another piece of the puzzle.
And the more people they met, the harder it became to reduce the story to simply "surfing in Ghana."
There was a much bigger story underneath.
A History They Didn't Expect
Then came another discovery.
While researching and talking to people, the filmmakers learned that wave riding in West Africa goes back much further than they had imagined.
People along the West African coast were riding waves centuries before the modern surfboard existed.
Some of the earliest European accounts describe children on the Gold Coast — present-day Ghana — using wooden boards and other simple floating objects to ride waves.
In the seventeenth century, European travellers documented children riding waves along the coast. Then, in 1834, Scottish explorer James Edward Alexander described young people wave riding in Accra.
For the three filmmakers, this completely changed their perspective.
They had initially been fascinated by videos of Ghanaian children riding wooden boards that looked almost like doors.
Now they were discovering that this relationship between people and waves wasn't simply a recent development.
It had a history stretching back centuries.
The modern surf community they were witnessing was connected to a much older relationship with the ocean.
Suddenly, Ghana was not just an unexpected place to find surfing.
It was a place with a wave-riding story of its own.
What They Came to Understand
When the three friends first imagined We The Wave, they thought they were going to make a documentary about surfing in Ghana.
After spending time there, they realised the story was much bigger.
It was about the relationship between people and the ocean.
Surfing was the lens through which they could explore that relationship.
For some of the people they met, the ocean represents freedom. For others, it is connected to work, identity and community. For young surfers, it can mean opportunity. For the girls they met at Justice's Brothers, learning to surf can mean confidence and self-esteem.
And for communities such as Kokrobite and Busua, surfing has become a way of bringing people together.
That was perhaps the biggest surprise of the journey.
They had travelled to Ghana because of a few videos they had seen online.
They arrived with a handful of contacts and a rough plan.
But once they were there, the story grew through the people they met.
A conversation led to another conversation. A surfer introduced them to another surfer. A contact became a friendship. A planned interview became an unexpected story.
The film began to emerge from those encounters.
We The Wave is now in post-production and is set to be released in 2027.
The three friends arrived in Ghana wanting to understand what a wave meant to the people riding it.
They left with a different understanding.
Sometimes, the most interesting part of a wave isn't the person riding it.
It's everything that happens around it.