• This summer, “20 Minutes” is going to meet surfer girls who are passionate about thrills and blue immensities.

  • Sporting feats, surpassing oneself, thirst for adventure… All of them have dedicated their lives to the waves and tried to push back the limits of body and mind.

  • In the third episode of the series, Léa Brassy, ​​in "Immersion" in the cool waters of her native Channel.

This summer, in order to celebrate board sports and the first historical surfing events at the Tokyo Olympic Games,

20 Minutes invites

 you to meet surfers who are passionate about thrills and blue immensities. After Justine Dupont, tamer of giant waves in Nazaré, Portugal, head for the Normandy coast with free surfer and freediver Léa Brassy.

A few years ago, you could have met her on a beach in Chile, Polynesia or Iceland. Like many lovers of spray and waves, surfing has taken him to the four corners of the globe, driven by a thirst for adventure and encounters, but also this need to discover other “life philosophies”. “Surfing was one of the ingredients, but it was above all to see how people lived when they were close to the sea, what they did and how I could find my place there,” she explains.

But after almost two decades of traveling the world, it was finally in the south of the Landes that the 35-year-old young woman finally landed, to live a simpler life there, and more in line with her ecological convictions.

She grows her own vegetables and produces her honey, in a process of autonomy.

"I'm learning all of that to know what it means to be able to meet your food needs," she says.

Despite this change of life, surfing is still very present in his daily life.

He recently guided him on a completely different adventure, immersed in the English Channel, where his family comes from, and where it all began.

With the Norman origins of a marine passion

It was in Siouville-Hagues, in the Cotentin, that Léa Brassy discovered surfing at the age of 11 thanks to her brother. A sport which at the time was far from the runaway encountered in recent years. “Where I started there were very few surfers, very few women in the water, very little equipment and very little organization. Today there is a hope pole, a surf club, several schools, that has nothing to do with it. There are always people in the water, it was an adventure for us, we went into the water alone, it was a whole different sporting landscape, ”she explains.

And it is in the Norman waves, where her love for surfing and the sea was born more than 20 years ago, that Léa Brassy returned for

Immersion

, a 52-minute film directed by the director duo Captain Yvon Studio, released in early June and available for download here.

The benefits of its distribution are also fully donated to SNSM Manche, the association of Rescuers at Sea.

Adventure at your fingertips

For this documentary film produced by Attitude Manche, an association that promotes the attractiveness of this department, she went to meet six inhabitants who have a close link with her two passions. We thus discover Basile Pinel, seasoned surfer and “shaper”, manufacturer of superb boards, but also Alban Lenoir, an oyster farmer. More surprisingly, she also met the choreographer Marion Motin (who worked in particular with Christine and the Queens or Angèle), who was inspired by the movements adopted by surfers on the waves, which she likened to dance. . An image that really takes on its full meaning thanks to the numerous surf sequences, both contemplative and invigorating.

“When I came back to the Channel, I wanted to go on a trip to meet people who have a strong link with the sea, with the coast.

I knew these people were going to tell me about the land in a very personal way.

», Explains Léa Brassy at the end of her documentary.

Adventure at your fingertips?

"You just have to leave your comfort and habits, change the ingredients and it's already the adventure," she says.

And of course, still this love for surfing intact, even if the waves may seem less exotic to us than in the tropics.

"It's the same thing, I use more the potential that there is around my home and I value a little more the simple things but which are not less interesting".

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