Girt By Sea is a musical and cinematic love letter to the coastline of Australia - a poetic celebration of our connection to the sea as documented over the past 100 years.

In Girt By Sea, director Shane McNeil draws on the extensive visual collections held by The National Film and Sound Archive and ABC Archives along with a mass of crowd-sourced home movies, to weave a lyrical and contemplative interpretation of Australia’s coastal history.

Set to an original score by award-winning Australian band The Panics, the film takes the viewer on an immersive visual journey around the shoreline of our island continent - exploring the role the coast has played in shaping our national identity; a place of relaxation and leisure, a place for work and industry, and occasionally, a place of terror.

From surf lifesavers on Bondi Beach to ship-building in Whyalla, from the sweeping coastline of the Great Ocean Road to sandy Xmas pilgrimages to Cottesloe, from Queensland’s unique coral reefs to tearful departures to foreign wars from Freemantle, and from Indigenous fishermen of Groote Eylandt down to Tasmania’s sentinel lighthouses, Girt By Sea celebrates the iconic, evocative, and often nostalgic place the coast holds in our collective heart.