My Octopus Teacher (2020)

I want to say immediately that this is an underwater creep show, but constructed with compassion and empathy. South African underwater explorer Craig Foster spends months in the waters off Cape Town getting to observe, understand, and ultimately befriend a female octopus in her own environment. With cinematography by Roger Horrocks and a haunting (creepy) yet appropriate score, we come to experience and believe Foster when he says, “She taught me I wasn’t a visitor but a part of her world.”

Over the course of this 85-minute documentary, we are subject to a startling aquatic intimacy like nothing I have ever seen before, and certainly beyond the fake artifice of Hollywood stuff like Aquaman or The Shape

of Water. This is the real deal as it pulls us forward into its surprising conclusion.