Eastbound was born from a conversation that unfolded over two years between Sydney-based photographer and cinematographer Lachlan Dempsey and Sri Lankan surfer Thillina Mayuranga. When Dempsey first moved to Sri Lanka’s southwest coast for a work assignment, he often found himself behind the lens photographing Mayuranga. Over time, the idea of a film began to take shape – until one day Dempsey finally told him it was time to head east, to Arugam Bay, and shoot the film they had been talking about for two years.
Dempsey’s work presents Sri Lanka as many imagine it: picturesque beaches, perfectly peeling waves, uncrowded lineups and a landscape steeped in the easy rhythm of South Asian life. “For two years I’d only been in the south of Sri Lanka; I hadn’t really gone anywhere else. The first time I finally went to Arugam Bay was last September. I remember thinking, this place is incredible,” Dempsey recalls.
The eight-minute film follows Mayuranga surfing the breaks along Sri Lanka’s east coast, moving effortlessly between boards, from longboards to twin-fins. For Dempsey, filming in the east felt inevitable. “He surfs in the south,” Dempsey says, “but not as much as he does in the east. I told him, if that’s what you’re really passionate about, then let’s go there. Let’s go east and make the film there.”
Mayuranga is the film’s central and largely solitary surfer, chosen for a style that feels quietly timeless. “He rides old-school boards,” Dempsey explains. “Fishes, mid-lengths, twin-fins, logs stuff like that.”
Despite its cinematic quality, Eastbound was never meant to be an overly constructed surf film. Dempsey initially considered adding voiceovers and a heavier narrative structure, but the idea quickly gave way to something simpler: documenting Mayuranga doing what he loves most. “I just wanted to show him surfing,” he says. “We had a shot list and we planned the surfing, but everything else was pretty loose.” The result is a film that leans into rhythm rather than storytelling – minutes of unbroken surfing along Sri Lanka’s east coast. Even the soundtrack evolved through an easy back-and-forth between the two. Mayuranga would send songs, Dempsey would add a few of his own and they experimented with edits set to different tracks. “He’d send me something and I’d cut a version to it,” Dempsey recalls.
When asked whether capturing the cultural life around Arugam Bay was important to him, Dempsey doesn’t hesitate. It was, but he was also cautious. Having spent most of his time on Sri Lanka’s south coast, the east was still unfamiliar territory.
“I didn’t really know the community there yet,” he admits. “In the south I know people a lot better, but the east was new to me. We saw so many cool things, but this time I mostly just wanted to show the surfing.”
What he did notice, however, was the tight-knit surf culture that thrives along the coast. “The community there is incredible,” he says. “It’s such a small place and everyone knows each other. It would be amazing to tell more stories about the people there – how they started surfing, like Malinda (a local photographer) and that whole crew. There are young kids out surfing almost every day.”
For Dempsey, those stories may well shape a future film. He even imagines grounding the next project more deeply in the island’s soundscape. “I told Tilly, next time, we should use an old Sri Lankan band. It would mix in way better.”
When I asked about the process of editing the film and if something didn’t make the final cut, Dempsey realised there was little he felt compelled to leave out. “I wasn’t doing it for anyone,” he says. “I was just doing it for us, so I could make it however I wanted.” In the end, only one sequence failed to make the final cut: footage from a lesser-known break north of Arugam Bay. The waves, he remembers, were firing. The footage, unfortunately, wasn’t. “We actually scored this really good wave up north of Arugam,” he says. “But the footage just didn’t come out the way we wanted, so we didn’t put it in. That’s probably the only one.”
Dempsey’s time in Sri Lanka has also sparked a growing curiosity about the rest of the region’s surf landscape. Among the places high on his list are India’s more obscure island breaks, as well as the Maldives – particularly the famed wave near Malé’s harbour known as Jailbreaks. “The Maldives is obviously covered a lot,” he says, “but I’ve heard there are still islands and waves people don’t really know about yet.” For now, the trip remains more of a dream than a plan, an expensive luxury unless work takes him there.
