Film short: Beneath the Surface

Many swimmers will have at some point experienced the difficuties of training in public lanes and the lapses in etiquette that can occur. Beneath the Surface, a new short film from writer and director Alex Osman, tells the darkly comic tale of a man who remembers a series of increasingly odd encounters in his local pool.

Osman, a filmmaker with a lifelong passion for swimming, describes the film as exploring how Apophenia (seeing patterns and making connections in random or meaningless data) can affect memory and behaviour whilst observing some humorous truths about lane swimming in public sessions; during the film we see how perceived infringements of lane etiquette spiral out of control.

Filmed in a restored Victorian era pool in north London the film has just finished a tour of global film festivals, where it has been widely acclaimed, and Osman is now keen to share it with a wider swimming audience. You can watch it above.