#Octopus teacher free#

“You’re on the edge of your seat,” she recalled. “There was something about this creature that was so appealing and so surprising.” In one of the film’s most dramatic sequences, a shark attacks the octopus and bites off one of its arms. “There were things that I saw that made my mouth drop open,” Ehrlich said. She was invited to help with the project in 2017 after six months of dives with Foster, who was eager to shape a staggering volume of footage that he’d already collected into the saga of a remarkable octopus. It felt incredible that he got such close access and was seeing such intimate details of this animal’s life.” “It was all shot in normal speed,” Reed continued, “so it had this natural, real, authentic feel to it. “Most nature films are shot on a long lens at a great distance, and they’re great at getting you close to the animals, but it’s technology that takes you there, really, and I find that a bit impersonal.” Foster, the film’s narrator and producer, shot most of its scenes himself with a small camera that he took with him on daily excursions underwater.

“It was the most incredible footage I’d seen of anything like it before,” said the U.K.-based Reed.

The film, an Oscar contender for documentary feature, offers something unique in the experience of its directors, James Reed, a longtime nature documentarian, and Pippa Ehrlich, a Cape Town science journalist with a marine conservation focus.

#Octopus teacher free#

The production heightens the familiar tropes of the nature-doc genre with its emotional account of a rare bond made between man and cephalopod - in this case, Craig Foster, a South African filmmaker, and a female octopus he encounters on his free dives into the freezing waters of the kelp forest in the Cape of Storms, outside Cape Town.

Amid a pandemic when many have been isolated in their homes, the crowd-pleasing Netflix film “My Octopus Teacher” offers viewers eight arms to hold them - and a much-needed hug.