Forget dizzying 15-second reels. With the 30-minute film WASHED, released in 2025, director Wade Carroll and the Quiksilver team are bringing surfing back to its core. The result of two years of intense filming, this project is an act of defiance against the fast-food consumption of social media. It’s a cultural manifesto, haunted by a punk ethos and driven by pure performance, proving that board culture is more than just a line of code in a news feed.
The 30-minute punk banger
Rather than caving to the pressure of instant posting, Quiksilver chose patience, keeping their raw footage far away from the social media frenzy. Thirty-four cameramen across the globe stacked up hard drives to create what they’re calling a “Hard Drive Cleanse”. Visually, the art direction is an unapologetic anti-algorithm statement. Long Beach’s Studio NICK and illustrator Brian Butler have injected analogue textures and an 80s zine aesthetic, lightyears away from overproduced corporate content.
The tone is set right from the intro: the video opens with Peter Fonda’s famous line from The Wild Angels (“We wanna be free!”), which launches straight into Mudhoney’s In ‘n’ Out of Grace. The soundtrack follows this furious trajectory, immediately plunging into a purely grunge atmosphere, carried by the heavy riffs of the Seattle band and J Mascis’s distorted guitars.
Going all-in on the lineup
WASHED ditches the style of modern surf movies to bring back a format from the glory days of the 90s: individual rider sections. We’re no longer following a destination; we’re dissecting a rider’s mindset and style. On one hand, the Championship Tour (CT) elite are letting loose.
Griffin Colapinto, freed from the rigid judging criteria of the WSL, unleashes mind-blowing creative spontaneity. Alongside him, Kanoa Igarashi drops his first proper free-surf section in years, proving his technical approach remains incredibly sharp outside of competition heats.
On the other hand, the pure free-surfers take over. Mikey Wright delivers powerful carves on his Ryan Burch “Pickle Fork” asymmetrical board, alongside a monumental air at Lakey Peak.
Finally, to close out the video, Kael Walsh’s part showcases ultra-committed surfing, from dropping into heavy Irish slabs to massive aerial rotations in Western Australia.
The film also strikes a perfect balance thanks to parts from Kauli Vaast and Marco Mignot. Between the Olympic champion fresh on the CT and the Rookie of the Year, the commitment is total and the surfing is rock solid. Meanwhile, Australian Lungi Slabb strips everything back to basics: pure, rail-to-rail surfing.
The raw conclusion to a trilogy
WASHED hasn’t just come out of nowhere: it’s the final chapter of a trilogy that kicked off in 2022 with the lo-fi vibes of Saturn, followed by the surf trips of Repeater the following year. With this latest release, we’ve come full circle. The director has stripped away the scenery to leave nothing but the trance: an obsession with the carve, absolute commitment, and the raw energy of surfing that speaks for itself.
