Event information reads: 7-9th November 2024, Riverside Studios, London, Surf / Film / Art / Culture

Sam Haddad

Sam Haddad lives in Brighton with her two young kids, though she works part-time in London. She edited Cooler, a surf, snow, skate and style magazine for young women, for 8 years and is now a Senior Editor at Mpora, an action sports and adventure website, where she focuses on longreads. Before Cooler she earned her journalism spurs on a couple of mainstream mags and before that did a couple of seasons snowboarding in Chamonix, when she started writing for Adrenalin magazine. She freelances for the Guardian Travel section and the Lonely Planet.

She dislikes not living near surfable waves and feels she spends more time looking at photos of people surfing than actually surfing but reminds herself that won’t be forever. And at least she gets to swim in the sea on a regular basis, and gaze at it longingly on an even more regular basis.

Point Break is one of her favourite movies, it made her want to be a surfer and for that reason alone she can forgive its ropey surf sequences and hint of cheese. She’s dreading the ‘extreeeme’ remake… For Sam, Leave a Message was pretty mould-shattering in terms of the standard of women’s surfing, but lacked the narrative she feels a great surf film needs. With that in mind Riding Giants is right up there for her, as is Rio Breaks and Into The Sea, Easkey Britton’s story of introducing surfing to women in IranIn terms of beautiful cinematography Sam likes One California Day and films by Thomas Campbell but thinks we’re still waiting for that great female surf movie…

Follow her at: @shhhaddad