Filmmaker’s Tribute to Oscar-Nominated ‘My Octopus Teacher’

South Africans around the world are so proud of ‘My Octopus Teacher’, the SA documentary that has been officially nominated for an Oscar in the Best Documentary Feature category. Below is one of the best tributes we’ve seen about the underwater film that features the unlikely and touching friendship between a human and an octopus. This tribute was written by another award-winning South African filmmaker, Susan Scott, of Stroop fame…

“This is incredible but not surprising!! ‘My Octopus Teacher’ Octopus nominated at the #Oscars (on Monday)! Just so thrilled for Craig and his team… I mailed him back in August when I had seen the film for the first time while judging on a festival before the film’s release.

“And because it had been a long, long time since I had been so powerfully moved by a film, I sent Craig my judging notes and thanked him for the incredible gift that he had given to the world by making #MyOctopusTeacher.”

“This extraordinary film reveals a world we’re not used to seeing… a breath-holding human visiting the ocean floor for long periods of time in extreme cold water conditions to spend day after day with what the script so aptly calls ‘a liquid animal’.

“The result is behavior that we are privileged to share in. And more than revealing the unique behavior of the octopus, we get to see the change in human behavior from a cold, clinical, scientific approach kind-of mindset towards a deep emotional understanding… that there really is more to this world then what we see.

“We start out as voyeurs into this special relationship between two friends and as we are pulled along their journey, we are kindly let in early on that this will end in heartache.

“Compelled now to see every day unfold between these two, that when we do get to the end, not only are we left bereft as the unspoken contract stipulated, but we feel that we have discovered something earth-shatteringly new.

“We realize that this blob, this animal with no face to connect to, became more than just an inanimate invertebrate… she reached out beyond the screen to touch us emotionally in ways that nature films rarely do these days.

“This was an extremely brave undertaking in a world of rational-based filmmaking petrified to anthorpomorphize. The film lives with you days after watching it, making you look around with fresh eyes, for sure questioning the world around you…”

Susan Scott and Bonne de Bod’s enchanting new documentary ‘Kingdoms of Fire, Ice and Fairy Tales’ is streaming now on Showmax.  

If you haven’t watched it yet, My Octopus Teacher is available on Netflix now.

The Oscars will be held on 25 April. See the full list of Oscar nominations here.