THE BLIND SEA
A blind man. A fifty-one-foot wave. The biggest wave ever surfed by any para athlete. Streaming now on Netflix Australia and New Zealand.
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SEE WHY GLOBAL MEDIA SAID HE WOULDN'T SURVIVE.
November 2022. Nazaré, Portugal. A wave the size of a five-storey building. A blind Australian surfer the international press had already written off. What happened next is in the Guinness Book of World Records. And on Netflix.
A LIFE LIVED AT THE LIMIT.
The Blind Sea is a feature documentary about Matt Formston — the GOAT of blind surfing and one of the world's most accomplished multi-sport athletes of all time. Four-time Adaptive Surfing World Champion. Cycling World Champion. World record holder in two completely different sports. Paralympian. All of it built without sight, after a macular dystrophy diagnosis at age five and a lifetime of being told what he wouldn't be able to do.
The film tracks Matt's whole story — the diagnosis, the schoolyard, the years of bullying, the rebuild, the two careers built in parallel, and the family at the centre of it all. Nazaré is part of the film. So is everything that made Nazaré possible.
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Filmed across Australia, the United States, Portugal, Fiji, and Indonesia, The Blind Sea is honest, intimate, and often funny. It is not a hero portrait and it does not flatten Matt into a symbol. It is the story of a man who has spent his whole life refusing the limits other people have set for him — told by the people who were there.
INDEPENDENTLY RECOGNISED. INTERNATIONALLY SELECTED.
The Blind Sea has been selected, recognised, and awarded across four countries. A summary of the film's awards stack below.
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A TOP FIVE AUSTRALIAN DOCUMENTARY OF 2024.
The Blind Sea premiered at the 2024 Sydney Film Festival as a finalist for the Documentary Australia Award. It launched theatrically at the Sydney Opera House. It went on to play 1,200+ cinema screenings across Australia in 2024 — placing it among the top five highest-performing documentary releases in Australian cinemas for the year. Then it landed on Netflix Australia and New Zealand.
Documentary Australia Award Finalist
Australian premiere release
Top five documentary release of the year
2014. THREE WORLDS. ONE YEAR. BLIND.
In 2014 Matt set a world record in track cycling and became a World Champion in Aguascalientes, Mexico. In the same year he exceeded his Optus enterprise B2B sales target by 140% — managing complex, multi-million dollar strategic accounts — and won a national Pacesetter Award. That same year his first child was born. Not one then the other. All of it. Simultaneously. Blind. More than a decade later Matt has three children, a strong marriage, and is still competing at world championship level. Nothing crashed. Nothing burned. The framework that built trust in his team on 50-foot waves is the same one that has sustained performance across every part of his life for 15 years. This is not a story about sacrifice. This is a story about what becomes possible when your standards are non-negotiable and trust runs through everything you do.
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"An extraordinarily gifted big wave surfer."
"Elevated beyond the feel good."
A TOP FIVE AUSTRALIAN DOCUMENTARY OF 2024.
Featured in Global Press
The Blind Sea has been featured in Esquire UK, The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Age, BBC World News, AFP News Agency, France 24, ABC News Australia, Channel 10 The Project, Fox Sports, Daily Mail, Men's Health Australia, Boss Hunting, Surfer Magazine, Surfline, The Inertia, and Tracks Magazine.
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Supporters of The Blind Sea
The Blind Sea was supported by Optus, Workday, Harvey Norman, HireUp, Vision Australia, ORIX, Park & Hills, the Australian Cultural Fund, and Documentary Australia.
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