Maya Gabeira.Photo: Kelly Cestari/World Surf League via Getty
A new documentary premiering Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival takes viewers on a ride through the thrilling — and sometimes chauvinistic — world of big wave surfing with one of the sport’s most accomplished athletes, Maya Gabeira.
“At the very outset, it was like, ‘Okay, we have a really interesting sport, we have a great athlete, but this could go nowhere,’ " Johnes, the filmmaker behindMaya and the Wave, tells PEOPLE ahead of the film’s debut, noting the dangers and uncertainty around the extreme sport.
But soon, Gabeira’s story unraveled into territories the director didn’t expect.
The drawn-out process, which becomes a primary focus of Johnes' film, is “indicative” of the sexism embedded in surfing’s male-dominated, machismo culture, according to the director.
“Unfortunately it’s just a very misogynist sport,” Johnes says. “And it’s a magnification, I think, of what generally happens in [our] culture.”
Maya Gabeira.Courtesy of TIFF
At times in the film, Gabeira is shown frustrated at her counterparts' dismissals of her and at her struggles to earn respect in the broader surfing community — despite the records and the scars that prove she belongs.
“Maya is unique in that she can be a very open person, and I really admire her willingness to share her mental health struggles, because a lot of people hide that, and they’re ashamed,” Johnes says. “And I think she realized that that was important for people to see, because a lot of people struggle with mental health issues and it was really brave of her to be willing to open up like that.”
Brian Ach/Getty
Courage is never in question throughout the hour-and-a-half documentary. One of the most harrowing scenes comes when Gabeira nearly dies chasing the glory of a big wave — crashing hard into the water, nearly drowning as she lies limp in the water for over a minute, before she’s dramatically resuscitated on the shore.
“I had a journal when I was a teenager and I had things written that I was going to be … the best big wave surfer in the world and I was going to surf the biggest wave ever,” says Gabeira. “I was born a dreamer.”
source: people.com
