My Octopus Teacher

My Octopus Teacher (2020) is a Netflix documentary you can watch online on iFILM. For years a burned-out filmmaker free-dives the freezing kelp forest off South Africa's Cape, and slowly befriends a wild octopus living on the seabed.

Craig Foster had hit a wall in his work when he started slipping into the cold water every morning without a wetsuit or tank. Down in the swaying kelp he spots a young female octopus and decides to return to her den day after day. Month by month she stops fleeing, until one day she reaches out and touches his hand. What follows had barely been filmed before: a man and an invertebrate who come to recognize one another. Foster watches her hunt, hide from sharks, lose an arm, and grow it back.

Directors Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed spent roughly eight years gathering the underwater footage, and the film walked off with the documentary feature prize at the 2021 Oscars. It's quiet, almost hypnotic, closer to meditation than to a standard nature doc. Stream My Octopus Teacher online on iFILM.