Dana Brown (“Step Into Liquid,” “Dust to Glory”) grew up in the world of competitive surfing. So it’s natural that as a filmmaker he should return to this scene for inspiration. His latest film focuses on the Triple Crown of pro surfing, a nearly two-month competition that takes place on the gorgeous beaches of Oahu’s North Shore. The waves that crash against this beach, we are told, are the most incredible, unpredictable, and dangerous ones in the world, a fitting setting for men and women to battle with nature with nothing but a surfboard to protect them.

After setting the scene with some incredible helicopter shots of the rest of Hawaii, the film introduces us to the heavy hitters of pro surfing off the island’s North Shore: gritty underdogs, retiring old pros, a couple of preteen wunderkinds, and many eager young surfers trying to break into the pro circuit for the first time. Everyone’s dream seems to be achieving a sort of surfing nirvana–which ideally includes an endorsement deal. Surprisingly, though, the collision of the pure sport and the moneyed pro sport is not cynical or soulless; even the longtime pros have a healthy admiration for the waves and respect for their competition.

Technically dazzling, “Highwater” is a classic sports film with edge-of-your-seat action, tragedy, triumph, and an insider’s view of the mechanics of the sport. The voiceover narration (by Brown himself) can be grating at times, and the final cut editing is sometimes more distracting than necessary—the screen splits into multiple windows that zoom back and forth, which feels more chaotic than carefully orchestrated. However, these complaints pale in comparison to the film’s real strength: the jaw-droppingly up-close footage of surfers skidding across giant waves.

Brown uses some truly incredible cameras (a crew of ninety using fifteen cams) which—when wielded by intrepid photographers bobbing in the ocean—capture the surfers and the waves up close in phenomenal resolution. Even though most of the film consists of footage played in slow motion (because the surfers move so fast that it’s hard for the layperson to even see them) every frame is crisp and perfectly lit.