My octopus teacher wins the Oscar

The friendship between a man and an octopus . To summarize it like this it seems the plot of a Disney animated film, but in reality it is a real story. So real that it was told on video day after day, meeting after meeting, until it became a documentary .

Written and directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed and produced by Netflix , ” My octopus teacher ” (in Italian “My friend at the bottom of the sea”) has put the public and critics in agreement, collecting prizes: after the Bafta , the Pwa Awards (Producers Guild of America Awards) and many others , it was the turn of the most coveted of all, the Oscar 2021 .

My octopus teacher, the plot

The documentary opens in the midst of a moment of crisis . Craig Foster , a South African filmmaker and naturalist, is exhausted and unmotivated at home and at work. He then decides to take a break from a daily life that is putting him to the test, returning to his country of origin.

It is there, between one dive and another among the underwater kelp forests , that the chance encounter that will change the course of its history is triggered. In fact, he runs into a female octopus – his octopus teacher, in fact – and begins to follow her movements, equipped only with a diving mask and camera.

Foster slowly follows the animal’s rhythms, follows its habits, captures its intelligence. Until the memorable moment when, after so many fleeting sightings, the octopus approaches it by touching it with a tentacle . This singular friendship, which lasted about a year, helps him to reconcile with nature and rediscover the serenity that he seemed to have lost.

The opinions of critics

“My octopus teacher is not the first documentary to immerse us in the mystical flora and fauna of the oceans,” reads the Hollywood Reporter . “But he is the first to chronicle a single creature from such a personal and sincere perspective , revealing not only emotional connections but also animal behaviors previously unknown to scientists.”

In fact, to give tangible bases to his empirical observations, Foster also consulted some experts . His personal story thus becomes the pretext to discover something more about the oceans, a fascinating and still partly unknown world.

It is also noteworthy that this successful documentary is part of a wider path. That of Sea change trust , founded by Foster himself in 2012 together with Ross Frylinck, with the aim of bringing the public closer to the precious ecosystems of South Africa through a passionate and at the same time scientifically solid story .