A prize-winning surfboard patterned with a striking mosaic of thousands of discarded cigarette butts has ridden some of the world’s most beautiful waves.
Now the film that followed its unlikely journey finally comes to home screens.
The Cigarette Surfboard, directed by Ben Judkins and built around surfer and industrial designer Taylor Lane’s unlikely invention, will make its official online premiere Sept. 15–27, timed around International Coastal Cleanup Day on Sept. 19. A $10 ticket gives viewers access to the film and a series of live virtual Q&As with surfers and ocean advocates featured in it.
The story began with something Lane found impossible to ignore: cigarette butts scattered across the beaches where he surfed.
Lane described the contrast to Good Times: the ocean offers “this beautiful thing” created by nature, while cigarette butts on the sand embody “the worst of the worst” of our throwaway culture.
For the 2017 Vissla/Surfrider Foundation Creators & Innovators Upcycle Contest, Lane turned more than 10,000 beach-collected butts into an intricate, sealed mosaic on a working surfboard.
His creation won the contest. It was also a beast.
It was beautiful, but not exactly high performance.
The first board weighed about 18 pounds, roughly three times the weight of a conventional board its size. Lane kept experimenting, eventually working with professional shapers to make later “Ciggy Boards” lighter, stronger and genuinely surfable.
“There were numerous failures that we just had to embrace and learn from,” Lane says.
That engineering problem became the passport for the movie.
Lane and Judkins took the boards around the world, meeting surfers whose lives had become entwined with protecting the places where they surf. Their journey reaches Hawai‘i, Fiji, South Africa, Ireland, the United Kingdom and California, combining big-wave beauty with scientists, activists, farmers and professional surfers asking what stewardship of the ocean can actually look like.
Lane describes the film’s approach as “Endless Summer-esque,” with surfing as an international language that needs no translation.
The cast also includes musician-surfer Jack Johnson, Rob Machado, Caity Simmers and Mikey February, among many others. What links them is not celebrity so much as the ocean: the film asks what people who spend their lives in it owe back to it.
The resulting film has earned praise for balancing spectacle with purpose.
SURFER calls it a clever hybrid of surf and environmental movie and singles out Tevita Gukilau riding a 4,000-cigarette single-fin through Cloudbreak as “must-see stuff.” Film Obsessive says the globe-spanning sections are “filmed beautifully and edited masterfully,” while Rotten Tomatoes shares critic Bill Arceneaux’s verdict: “Incredibly engaging, very smart, and totally rad.”
But the Cigarette Surfboard did not remain a movie prop or art project.
Back in Santa Cruz, Lane and fellow surfers brought the Ciggy Boards into public meetings and joined local environmental and health advocates pressing officials to confront cigarette-filter litter.
Santa Cruz County approved a ban on sales of filtered tobacco products in 2024. The City of Santa Cruz and Capitola adopted similar measures in 2025, with all three set to take effect in 2027.
What began as a way to make people notice beach litter had moved from surfboard to screen to City Hall. The beauty had done more than attract attention; it helped turn attention into action.
The online premiere keeps that conversation alive. Over five days, ticket holders can meet professional surfer and chemist Cliff Kapono; Fiji’s surfer and ocean activist Hannah Bennett; former pro surfer and regenerative farmer Fergal Smith; surfer and environmental scholar Easkey Britton; and Surfers Against Sewage co-founder Chris Hines.
Their live virtual Q&As run Sept. 15–19.
The filmmakers say the documentary has already screened more than 130 times in two years, including 60 festival screenings in 12 countries and 16 states, and has won 16 awards.
The Cigarette Surfboard’s trick is to make people look twice: first at something beautiful, then at what it is made from. The film asks for one more look at the ocean beneath it.
The Cigarette Surfboard streams Sept. 15–27. Tickets are $10 at thecigarettesurfboard.com; click “Pre-order your $10 film ticket” to continue to the Eventive streaming page.
