Alice Ward on her Irish surf film featuring the female surfers who call our wild Atlantic waters home

Filmed predominantly along the coasts of Sligo and Donegal in 2019 and 2020, director and surfer Alice Ward admits that Ebb and Flow, an Irish surf film, was her first time filming in the water. “There was a lot of unusable footage at the beginning,” she laughs.

Originally from Dublin, Alice moved to Sligo four years ago and found herself suddenly surrounded by talented female surfers. “As a filmmaker, I was always looking up films and videos and there was nothing really on female surfers in Ireland… so I really thought I was such a niche but when I went to Sligo I found so many women in the water.”

Wanting to show the breadth of talented women along this stretch of coast, she wanted to create a documentary focused on three of them: Katie McAnena, Elizabeth Clyne and Shawna Ward. “Katie is amazing, she was the first woman to ever windsurf Jaws in Hawaii, she lives just down the road from me and yet I’d never heard of her,” says Alice, while she knew of Shauna as a member of the Irish surf team and Elizabeth was a neighbour in Strandhill. 

The one that sticks out the most is footage of Katie windsurfing at Sligo’s big wave spot Mullaghmore, a tiny red sail almost engulfed in a 15-foot wall of water. “That day was crazy because we had arranged to film that morning in a different spot near Lissadell,” explains Alice. “It was a big day so there was so much water moving and Katie just casually said, ‘Oh will we go look at Mullaghmore and wait until the tide drops and come back here’… We went to Mullaghmore and sat in the car for ten minutes and she was like ‘Okay, I’m doing it. I’m going out. The conditions are right, it’s now or never.’ And then she came back in afterwards, cool as a cucumber and was like, ‘Oh I have to go get the kids now’.”

Alice wanted to capture not just the unbelievable skills and fearlessness of these women, but the commitment they have to the waves, how it ebbs and flows around their daily lives. When Alice asked Katie to be in the film, Katie explained that she’d just had a baby and hadn’t really been in the water for months. “‘Are you sure you want me?’ she asked and I said ‘yes, this is exactly why I want you in the film’.”