Tonight on Netflix: Crying… In Front of an Octopus? Watch this movie and we will talk about it

In 2010, exhausted from long hours of work, documentary filmmaker Craig Foster decided to leave to rebuild his life at the source, at the top of South Africa, where he spent his childhood. There, in a unique place called Hurricane Cape, he started snorkeling and decided to explore the kelp forest on the coast of Africa. When he first looks at this extraordinary environment, he is far from imagining what will be one of the most incredible encounters of his life.

Indeed, while diving, he befriended an octopus and for a whole year shared the daily life of this extraordinary animal, gradually discovering its intelligence, sensitivity, complexity, but also the many dangers that await it.

“To many people, the octopus is an alien. But it’s strange, the closer you get to it, the more you realize that it’s very much like us. It’s a completely different world. It’s an incredible feeling. We feel that something is fabulous. It’s going to happen, but there’s a line that shouldn’t get over it.”

It is with these few words that the wisdom of the octopus begins. Narrated in the first person by Craig Foster, who recounts the unique experience he went through without covering up the slightest detail, this documentary is a story of reconnection, renewal, inner restoration.

Just as an octopus amputated by a tentacle can see itself grow after a certain period of time, Foster, in contact with this unique friend, gradually regenerates his tired soul.

Before living this extraordinary experience, the documentary filmmaker was indeed coming out of a particularly difficult period:

“I lived in real hell for two years”– he says at the beginning of the film. “I worked for years until I was tired, I slept badly for months, my family suffered. (…) That had to change.”

As incredible as it may seem when you haven’t seen the film yet, this unexpected meeting, as Foster himself describes it, literally turned his life upside down and even allowed him to reconnect with his young son.

Following its narrator, this feature film awarded by Netflix with the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2021 offers a surprising, gentle and beautiful journey, but also relentless and sometimes overwhelming, as you can see throughout the film.

Considered by AlloCiné internet users as the 25th best documentary of all time, it has an excellent average of 4,353 out of 5 stars and is also one of the top 7 Netflix Originals.

So forget about an hour and 25 minutes of the undersea creature from 20,000 Leagues or the monstrous Kraken from Pirates of the Caribbean. Forget everything the movies have told you about this special animal and let yourself be tamed by the wisdom of the octopus.

(re)discover the trailer for the film…