![]() Slide Anything shortcode error: A valid ID has not been provided Years later, in his quest to learn about the octopus, Foster would emulate the bushman’s legendary tracking skills. The filmmaker says he felt an intense longing to be inside the natural world in the same way the hunter was. He had an uncanny ability to spot wildlife that was invisible to Foster as an outsider. Foster recollects his amazement at how profoundly attuned the hunter was to his surroundings. The other key experience in Foster’s personal evolution was the time he and his brother Damon spent filming their first picture, a 2000 documentary titled The Great Dance, which follows the daily life of a bushman in the Kalahari Desert. As he recounts these childhood memories, the film makes superb use of reenactments to keep the story visually engaging. This was incredibly exciting to him as a child, and it’s part of what fueled his passion for exploring the ocean. Foster remembers waves so fierce they broke down the bungalow’s doors and flooded the ground floor. The first was growing up in a wooden bungalow on the shore of the notoriously treacherous Cape of Good Hope. Early on in the film, he describes two formative experiences that prepared him for his time with the octopus. Her body is considerably smaller than a cat’s, but she is not un-catlike in the way she curiously prods her tentacles at Foster’s bare arm.įoster is both our main human subject and our narrator. ![]() (In order to be closer to nature, he has foregone a wetsuit and oxygen tanks.) In the next shot, we see him eye-level with the octopus, who timidly remains half-tucked in her rocky den. Eventually we alight on Foster as he roams the seafloor, clad only in trunks, scuba fins, a diving hood and goggles. The camera then tracks forward through an aquamarine dreamland of swaying kelp. We’re immediately lulled by the music’s lilting chants, the sound of surf breaking against boulders and the faint calls of seagulls. We open with a slow aerial tracking shot of an ethereally lit ocean shore. The first scene beautifully evokes the odd charm of their relationship. ![]() Despite the vast species gap, they developed a special bond. During one dive, he had a chance encounter with a female octopus, and over the next 11 months he devoted his life to befriending and learning all he could about her. Some years back, Foster’s health and family life were suffering terribly due to his high-stress lifestyle, and he decided to seek solace in a shallow cove he had explored as a child. That man is South African documentary filmmaker Craig Foster. My Octopus Teacher is both a gorgeous wildlife documentary and a moving tale of how a man in crisis found joy and purpose through immersion in nature and a remarkable relationship with an octopus. Written and directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed cinematographed by Roger Horrocks edited by Pippa Ehrlich and Dan Schwalm music by Kevin Smuts produced by Craig Foster. A Netflix Original documentary in association with Off the Fence and The Sea Change Project. ![]()
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