Everyday Films recently announced that ZDF Studios’ Off the Fence (OTF) has acquired the documentary feature ‘Resident Orca’. OTF, the company behind BAFTA and Academy award-winning My Octopus Teacher, has taken worldwide rights outside of Canada. The team from OTF will be attending Sunny Side of the Doc with the film, directed by Sarah Sharkey Pearce and Simon Schneider.
The documentary had its world premiere at the Miami Film Festival in April, and tells the shocking story of a captive whale and the fight for her survival and freedom. After decades of failed attempts to bring her home, an unlikely partnership forms between Indigenous matriarchs, a billionaire philanthropist, killer whale experts, and the aquarium’s new owner who take on the herculean task of freeing Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut (Lolita/Tokitae) from the Miami Seaquarium and bring her home to the Salish Sea.
“Sharkey Pearce and Schneider have produced a stunning and compelling film that we know will leave audiences profoundly moved. Our deep-rooted kinship with animals is powerfully told through the heroism of the Lummi Tribe and their fight to set Lolita the whale free. Resident Orca is a perfect example of a film that represents Off the Fence’s core values of championing authentic human and animal storytelling as well as impact programming. Sharing stories that include Indigenous ways of knowing is vital in expanding our understanding of the home we all share and we are proud to be entrusted with such a powerful film that cannot help but inspire audiences worldwide,” says Isobel Kinnear, Acquisitions Executive, Off the Fence.
Resident Orca was nominated for the Documentary Achievement Award in Miami and will continue its film festival tour before being available to wider audiences on Bell Media’s CRAVE in Canada. The film was directed by Sarah Sharkey Pearce (The Devil You Know) and Simon Schneider (Hadwin’s Judgement), Edited by Tony Kent (I Am Patrick Swayze) and composed by Jesse Zubot (Bones of Crows). Executive producers are Advocate and Lummi Tribal Elders Squil-le-he-le Raynell Morris and Tah-Mahs Ellie Kinley and James Costa (Welcome to Chechnya), Lynne Kirby (Thick Skin), Romney Grant and Melissa Gaucher. Charles Vinick, Executive Director of The Whale Sanctuary Project and founding member of Friends of Lolita is featured in the documentary alongside, Squil-le-he-le Raynell Morris, Tah-Mahs Ellie Kinley, President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Pritam Singh and Lolita’s ex-trainer-Marcia-Henton.
The film, which is a Crave Original, was made possible with the support of Crave, Bell Media, Canada Media Fund, Rogers Documentary Fund, Creative BC, Province of British Columbia, and the Government of Canada.
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