Volume 6 (2019)

Born on the island of La Réunion, Julie Gautier grew up as a child of the ocean. Free diving and spearfishing became second nature to her but her passion lies in the creative process - as an award-winning film maker and a dancer. Fusing free diving and dance, Gautier leads us into a new territory of ocean life. Julie is Gautier’s powerful story of finding her creative voice beneath the surface.

When Laurent Ballesta was a little kid, he didn’t play cowboys and Indians – he dreamed of an adventurous life like his big role model: Jacques Cousteau, pioneer of oceanic exploration and marine filmmaker of the first hour. A dream come true: Today Ballesta is not only a marine biologist but one of the most renowned wild life photographers worldwide. In 700 Sharks the Frenchman takes us along to the Pacific atoll Fakarava, where he has been studying the hunting behavior of great reef sharks for four years.

With cutting edge technology and an international team of experts Ballesta wants to uncover the sharks’ strategies hunting groupers in a narrow ravine on the coral belt. The competition is tough: More than 700 specimen gather in the ravine – the biggest school of sharks ever recorded. But every fourth attempt of the hunt is successful. How is it that these sharks are more effective hunters than a pack of wolves?

On their search for answers Ballesta and his team uncover as much about the hunter as the hunted and end up between enemy lines while documenting the nocturnal feast. With unprecedented footage and spectacular scenes 700 Sharks opens our eyes to the fascinating complexities of life underwater and the moon’s influence on it.

The life of Andy Irons reads like the surfer’s version of the American dream. Growing up in a struggling working class family in Hawaii, his talent for riding waves was discovered early on, and it catapulted him into an unprecedented career in surfing. In Kissed by God, we meet one of surfing’s all-time greats, a man who would change the sport forever but never managed to escape his own worst enemy in life and on the board—himself.

In the 1990s, Andy Irons and his brother Bruce quickly gained a reputation as young guns in the sport, firing up Hawaii’s scene and surfing as hard as they partied. While his contemporary and rival Kelly Slater is known for his composed focus, Andy Irons made a name for himself as the enfant terrible on and off the board. Both his talent and his temper remained unchecked, but what appeared to be a surfing star’s eccentricities was actually bipolar disorder, so severe that it sent Irons on a roller coaster of soaring athletic feats to the darkest depths of depression. Kissed by God is not just a riveting surf portrait; it's also the heartrending story of a beloved athlete, one who pushed the limits of his sport and transcended the boundaries of his condition against all odds up and until his untimely death.