For twenty years, Patrick Dykstra has dedicated his life to travelling the globe, following and diving with whales. Over the years, Pat has learned how whales see and hear, how they perceive other creatures in the water and how they behave at close quarters. He has a finely tuned sense and knows how to act when within touching distance of a whale – what to do, what not to do, and when. This allows him to consistently get closer than anyone else alive – a truly unique skill.
Patrick recently experienced a life-changing event. In Dominica in 2019, he had a close encounter with a female sperm whale. She seemed to be curious about him, coming within touching distance, pulsing him with her sonar. She studied him as he studied her. Patrick felt an overwhelming sense that she was genuinely trying to communicate.
In PATRICK AND THE WHALE, we follow Patrick as he travels to Dominica once again to find this special whale he has named "Dolores", so she can help him show us the hidden world of her species. Using stunning underwater footage, Patrick will explore the fascinating nature of the sperm whale, attempting to shine a light on its intelligence and complexity, as well as highlighting its current and past relationships with humankind.
The film also follows his personal journey and explores the psychology of a man who has sacrificed everything in his single-minded quest to connect with, and understand, the biggest creatures in the ocean.
If land that is difficult or impossible to farm returns to a wild state, how does that impact people and wildlife? PLACES TO BE WILD profiles a successful partnership between a landowner and the Wetland Reserve Program. By combining insightful and inspiring on-camera interviews with captivating landscape and wildlife footage, the film illustrates the concept of wildlife Cores and Corridors, and shows how rewilding can benefit people and the wider world.
Alabama is not a dumpster.
Litter washing into our waterways is a problem not only affecting our pocketbooks and well-being, but it also spoils our enjoyment of Alabama’s great outdoors.
Join a passionate group of watershed guardians as they address the enormous issue of litter accumulating in our creeks, streams and rivers.
JACK'S SOLAR GARDEN is a short film about agrivoltaics which is the combination of solar energy collection and agriculture. By utilizing the land while capturing solar energy - this model offers land developers and farmers a win-win scenario.
The film features Jack's Solar Garden - the largest commercial research site using agrivoltaics in the US. It describes the agrivoltaics model and the research being done at Jack's to further prove this method.
This film documents an effort to understand how a broken water network is technologically mended despite the risk to disadvantaged groups in society.
The iconic river of the west, the mighty Columbia River, was once the source of the greatest salmon runs in the world. But massive dams have blocked salmon from returning to the vast headwaters of the upper Columbia River in Canada for over 80 years.
BRINGING THE SALMON HOME is the story of three Indigenous Nations who are upholding their sacred responsibility to reintroduce the salmon, working with US Tribal relations and allies along the river. First person stories are combined with vivid landscape and underwater salmon footage, and archival film reels, to tell the long-hidden story of these Salmon People. The losses have been immense. Nation members recount how they were offered tins of Spam as they were starving from the lack of salmon, at the same time as their children were wrenched from their homes through a genocidal Indian residential school system. Today the Syilx Okanagan, Secwépemc, and Ktunaxa Nations are working to bring the salmon home, for the benefit of all.
BRINGING THE SALMON HOME offers new beginnings while acknowledging the past. It prompts necessary reflection and action to support self-determination and decolonization. It proposes early steps towards understanding what reconciliation requires. Of working collaboratively through an Indigenous-centred process that includes all Columbia River basin residents. Of finding solutions to complex challenges by combining traditional Indigenous knowledge and western science, and cultural renewal. This is a vital film that calls on the inspiration and commitment of present and future generations.
INVISIBLE LANDSCAPES explores how sound tells the climate story of the future. It sounds like a bird’s song, and you can't take your ears off it. But it's not – it’s just the popping bubbles of a melting glacier.
A group of musicians equipped with sensitive microphones and headphones set out on an exploration. They head to places in the Czech and Icelandic countryside, either marred by industry or untouched by man, to discover and understand the sound of catastrophe – the sound of ongoing climate change – which, in and of itself, can be far more beautiful, and more imaginative, than what it heralds.
While sight allows phenomena and things to be encompassed in a static state and in a certain entirety, hearing allows us to understand how the sounds affect and clash with their surroundings. Sound is the consequence of an event that happened in the past and points towards a future now being decided, one that may potentially be inevitable and destructive for us. It cannot yet be seen in the invisible landscapes, but – if we listen carefully – it is already there.
The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) is an NGO working on adapting the world to a changing climate. When looking for a place for their headquarters, the city of Rotterdam proposed to donate them a building that will float with the rising sea levels.
The documentary film takes the viewers on a journey through the minds of all the people that gave life to this project: politicians, designers and builders. Why would you build a floating building in the middle of the city and what does it have to do with climate politics? The film contains the answers to these questions, gives a sneak peek into the board rooms of GCA and holds a place for the legendary mayor of Rotterdam: Ahmed Aboutaleb.
ANCESTRAL RIVERS explores the Indigenous Youth River Guide Training (IYRGT) program that aims to remove barriers and create opportunities for youth to learn land-based skills such as flat-water and whitewater canoeing, wilderness medicine and whitewater rescue training in order to become wilderness guides. The goal is to improve self-esteem, leadership, self-determination and expose youth to potential career opportunities all while centering Indigenous languages and knowledge. This is the first IYRGT cohort's story.
WATER IN THE DESERT is a portrait of an optimistic American archaeology student at the University of New Mexico, Emily Hayes-Rich (25), studying the ancient irrigation systems of the Moroccan Sahara called the khettara. Emily explores the history, management, and inherited knowledge of southern Morocco’s irrigation system with the guidance of the local Water Association to map the social structures that have made such a system viable for millennia, and what lessons desert communities of the present and future can gather from these ancient systems.
WATER IN THE DESERT explores its subject(s) with a collage-like approach, incorporating interviews with interesting, informative moments as well as more artistic, stylized moments between the camera and the landscape.
In a place where water is plentiful, almost half the population has no running water. In this context, CASA (Amazon self-sustaining cities) proposed to work with the collection of rainwater
SHARKWATER: EXTINCTION is a thrilling and inspiring action packed journey that follows filmmaker Rob Stewart as he exposes the massive illegal shark fin industry and the political corruption behind it — a conspiracy that is leading to the extinction of sharks.
From West Africa, Spain, Panama, Costa Rica, France, and even in our own backyard, Stewart’s third film dives into the often violent underworld of the pirate fishing trade to expose a multi-billion dollar industry.
Shark finning is still rampant, shark fin soup is still being consumed on an enormous scale, and endangered sharks are now also being used to make products for human consumption. Stewart’s mission is to save the sharks and oceans before it’s too late.
But exposing illegal activities isn’t easy; protecting sharks has earned him some powerful enemies.
Johns Islanders fight to hold onto their ancestral land, culture, and trees amid the threat of land loss due to overdevelopment and climate change related sea level rise. Their story is reflected in the fight to protect the Angel Oak, a beloved live oak tree that is over 400 years old and located on a former plantation on the island.
INCIPIENCE is a short, experimental art film about the creation of the world, earth and water, the origin of life filmed by one person without the involvement of a film crew, VFX or combined filming.
In ECHOES OF THE RIO, a woman living on the U.S./Mexico border invokes the voice of the Rio Grande which guides her through the history of migration and the symbiotic relationship with the Indigenous people of the land. As the river speaks, echoes follow, ultimately exposing the socio-ecological destruction caused when the river became a border and a political weapon.
For filmmaker Rob Stewart, exploring sharks began as an underwater adventure. What it turned into was a beautiful and dangerous life journey into the balance of life on earth.
Driven by passion fed from a lifelong fascination with sharks, Stewart debunks historical stereotypes and media depictions of sharks as bloodthirsty, man-eating monsters and reveals the reality of sharks as pillars in the evolution of the seas.
Filmed in visually stunning, high definition video, SHARKWATER takes you into the most shark rich waters of the world, exposing the exploitation and corruption surrounding the world’s shark populations in the marine reserves of Cocos Island, Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.
CAIÇARA is a short film about conscious consumption of products (fish) from the maritime ecosystem. This warning can be reflective of many places around the world as it is a global emergency. The film is set in Rio de Janeiro, one of the most famous cities in the world, and with one of the oldest artisanal fishing colonies in Brazil - 'Colônia de Pescadores Z-13'. The character who reflects on the issue is a young “caiçara”, who are the inhabitants of the coast of the southeastern and southern regions of Brazil, and whose traditional culture is based mainly on artisanal, subsistence fishing.
Captain Sam Merrett has seen a dream come to life as his 65-foot, metal-hulled sail freight boat, ‘The Apollonia’, has successfully completed three seasons delivering cargo – largely malt, grain, corn, pumpkins and red oak – from Hudson to New York City and back without burning fossil fuels, using only the wind and sun to propel and navigate.
The Oceans 8 Films team had been following the progress of rebuilding the boat and filming began at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, in May 2020. That Sam’s Quixotic vision would be successful was never guaranteed, especially in these days when everyone, it seems, needs everything overnight, or faster (thanks to Amazon!). Sam’s way, by sail-power, takes a purposely slower view, if just as efficient. Today it is the only sail-freight boat operating in United States waters.
Seen through the eyes of a goddess, a centuries old record of her crossing reveals the cultural losses of climate change.
FOLLOWING THE FLOW tells the story of the once-mighty Macquarie Wambool River, one small part of Australia's greatest inland water system: the Murray-Darling Basin. A river detached from its natural ability to self-regulate, completely in the hands of humanity. A river that is somehow both the soul of the towns it passes through and an oft-forgotten footnote to their story.
To explore that relationship we meet with people. And if there’s one thing the Macquarie River has in spades, it is people with a passion for it. Historians, First Nations people, ecologists, small business owners, water managers, farmers and fishers all with a story to tell.
FOLLOWING THE FLOW sets out to tell the story of the river, shaped by humans, but instead found the story of humans, shaped by the river. With a cast of outback characters and stunning cinematography the film gives context to broader conversations about climate change, production, ecology and finding a way forward in a less than certain world.
In 2021, several communities in BC experienced both Hell and Highwater. This short film gives context to Indigenous communities struggling with trauma in all it's forms and calls out colonialism for it's ongoing challenges.
SAMQWAN: WATER is a short documentary about the current threats to the world's water systems from the extractive industry, and the need for us to support Indigenous water protectors on the front lines of protecting the earth's water sources. It is set within the context of my home reserve - Eel River Bar First Nation - and the water sources on Mi'kmaw territory.
This short doc was adapted from a podcast I created for imagineNATIVE 2022 for the FLOW exhibit. I decided to take that podcast and turn it into a short, educational documentary with a powerful call to action take-away for viewers.
I specifically designed it for a social media audience in terms of how people absorb social media content. Many social platforms are designed around fast-paced, short content that is visual, auditory and that can maintain the viewers attention by consistently changing the visual components every 8 seconds or less.
Similarly, the visual content is expected to keep pace with the narration - matching images to words. The reason the documentary was done this way, is to increase audience size and accessibility, and thus increase the impact of my call to action.
The only way to save the water is for Canadians and Americans to join with Indigenous peoples while we protect the water for all life on Mother Earth. #waterislife
A short documentary chronicling the efforts of Ian Smith and dedicated volunteers as they use innovative techniques to bring new opportunities to underserved youth in Indiana County Pennsylvania, creating a community around the next generation of environmental stewardship. Along the way we meet environmental educators and mentors who were inspired by their own time in the program, as well as the youth who hold the key to a sustainable future.
IN THE WHALE is a feature-length film about arguably the greatest fish story ever told, though this one is true. It's the account of a man who survived to tell the tale of being swallowed by a whale, and what happened after being spit out.
In the shark-filled waters off Cape Cod, Michael Packard has long tempted fate. For several months a year, Packard and his longtime mate, Josiah Mayo, cast off nearly every morning around dawn and navigate through the half-light to their diving grounds off Provincetown, the idiosyncratic, isolated community where they grew up at the tip of the Cape. Packard buckles on his scuba tank and plunges into the cold waters to hunt on the seafloor.
As the region’s last-remaining commercial lobster diver, the 57-year-old father has had his share of harrowing experiences, which include close encounters with great whites, nearly drowning, and having to pull up the body of a fellow diver. He even survived a plane crash in the jungles of Costa Rica, where he ran a charter fishing business. But what happened to him on a routine dive during a clear June morning was something he never imagined possible, and many around the world refused to believe.
In an experience of biblical proportions, Packard was engulfed by a humpback whale, caught in the watery cavity of its massive mouth. After some 30 seconds of a pitch-black captivity, in which he expected to die, he was spit out, fins first, to the surface, where Mayo and another fisherman rescued him.
The publicity was similarly dizzying for the reclusive fisherman, whose survival story spread around the world in news dispatches. But what came after the limelight dimmed was even more significant for Packard.
When the largest dam removal project in history begins, a group of indigenous youth learn to whitewater kayak in hopes of becoming the first people to paddle the restored river from source to sea. With jaw-dropping aerial cinematography and moving storytelling, PADDLE TRIBAL WATERS
is a fully immersive experience, showcasing the unbreakable bond between people and their ancestral lands. The film gives viewers a bird’s eye view as an unforgettable group of young people training for the adventure of a lifetime.
In 2014, the citizens of Toledo, Ohio, had to go without running water for three days when a bloom of toxic algae entered the drinking water plant from Lake Erie. This should have been a wake-up call for politicians, big agriculture, and citizens everywhere that freshwater resources are at risk of becoming toxic worldwide. THE ERIE SITUATION explores the confluence of science, public sentiment, politics, and the powerful farming lobby as Ohio wrestles with how to confront the drivers of toxic algae. What's at stake? Who's at risk? And will volunteer measures be enough to confront this growing crisis, both in Ohio and beyond?
DISCONNECTED is a film by Florian Seltmann, a filmmaker from Germany. He tells about his feelings that have preoccupied him in recent years and why he wants to give a new meaning to his films.
When he got in touch with Belen Garcia Ovide from "Ocean Missions Iceland", he decided to join their sailing expedition, whose goal is to raise awareness about our oceans and marine life. On this journey we perceive the forces of the ocean, its sensitive fragile ecosystems and how fundamental our relationship with them is. You will gain insight into the work of the "Ocean Missions" crew and learn why their expeditions are a great way to travel with a better purpose.
Can a film create a state of devotional meditation? “Listen to the voice of being…” in the Sierra Nevada. An enchanting electronic score immerses the viewer in a voyage of reverence.
WILDFIRE is a short documentary film about a little red panda, a rare species, that has become homeless as a result of the recent 16 day wildfire in the Nepali mid-hills, just one more of a growing number of symptoms of the climate crisis that spares no human or animal.
In a time of rising seas and intensifying storms, one of the world’s wealthiest, most-educated cities made a fateful decision to spend billions of dollars erecting a new district along its coast — on landfill, at sea level. Unlike other places imperiled by climate change, this neighborhood of glass towers housing some of the world’s largest companies was built well after scientists began warning of the threats, including many at its renowned universities. The city, which already has more high-tide flooding than just about any other in the United States, called its new quarter the Innovation District. But with seas rising inexorably, and at an accelerating rate, others are calling the neighborhood by a different name: Inundation District.
For years Nanna Kreutzmann worked as a photojournalist, documenting disasters and conflict around the world. Eventually the enormity of wars, tsunamis and bloody revolutions created an inner trauma, and forced her to leave her former life behind. But when Kreutzmann discovered freediving, she found her sanctuary. In the underwater world of peace, she began documenting the community that embraced her, at the time of her distress.
UNDERSEA is an inspiring portrait of an extraordinary woman’s inner life, rich with beautiful footage from the underwater world where she has finally found a home.
In 8 BILLIONS: WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE, Ailton Krenak, Indigenous leader and thinker, talks about the pain of the Watú (or Rio Doce in the Krenak language). Sick with the biggest environmental disaster in Brazilian history, the Mariana Dam disaster, the river asks for help. From the impacts on his village on the banks of the river, he creates an overview of the current Anthropocene period and invites all human beings to a collective journey of reflection and self-criticism, aiming at the urgent but necessary paradigm shifts.
REVOLUTION is a feature documentary about opening your eyes, changing the world and fighting for something. A true life adventure following director Rob Stewart in the follow up to his smash hit SHARKWATER, REVOLUTION is an epic adventure into the evolution of life on earth and the revolution to save us.
Discovering that there’s more in jeopardy than sharks, Stewart uncovers a grave secret threatening our own survival as a species, and embarks on a life-threatening adventure through 4 years and 15 countries into the greatest battle ever waged.
Bringing you some of the most incredible wildlife spectacles ever recorded, audiences are brought face to face with sharks and cuddly lemurs, into the microscopic world of the pygmy seahorse, and on the hunt with the deadly flamboyant cuttlefish. From the coral reefs in Papua New Guinea to the rainforests in Madagascar, Stewart reveals that all of our actions are interconnected.
In the south of Madagascar, the village of Belemboké has no running water, no taps and no school. To access liveable amounts of water, 3 kids have to travel excruciating distances and make their way underground to the bowels of the Earth... everyday.
From Award Winning director Matthew Wagner comes When Hope Breaks Through, the inspiring story of Mike Shoreman, a disabled paddleboarder who attempts to become the first person with disabilities to cross all five Great Lakes. In 2018 Mike was diagnosed with a neurological condition that left him paralyzed, with vertigo, hearing and vision loss, ultimately leading to depression and a mental health breakdown. This riveting documentary explores the current state of the mental health crisis in Canada and our relationships with our own mental health. The film immerses the audience in Mike's epic five crossings, encompassing over 300 kilometers of open water paddling with his dedicated crossings team. Together these strangers come together and form an inseparable bond as they face and conquer obstacles from boats breaking down, medical emergencies to hallucinations and everything in between.
80 close up shots, 7 seconds each.
80 abstract paintings in motion.
Form, abstraction, light, reflection, movement, flow, colour, transparency, monochrome.
Original audio.
Taiwan is an island of mountains that capture moisture and cause rainfall. Valleys come with mountains and when the water flows down the hillsides of these valleys, it is captured to form rivers and streams. However, in the steepest terrains, when it rains heavily and suddenly, the water level will rise in an instant and flow to the sea, while the land remains as dry as usual. How do we respond to a situation like this?
THE WATER NETWORK OF THE EARTH originates in the canals in Taoyuan, Taiwan. and combines the issue of water shortages with the development and usage of water resources to show how our ancestors created a water network with canals, dug ponds where artesian springs are, and canals where rivers are. In the past 300 years, we discover how they created an artificial water network to deal with the natural issue of water shortages and turned a wasteland into fertile farmland with water from the faraway mountains.
In SHIP HAPPENS, a "toxic relationship" unfolds between a 656 foot capsized ship loaded with 4200 vehicles and the small town residents of Saint Simons Island, Georgia, who bear helpless witness to a two-year salvage project gone awry in their otherwise idyllic island paradise.
FLYWAYS: THE UNTOLD JOURNEY OF MIGRATORY SHOREBIRDS explores the world’s migratory shorebirds and their epic flyways that are under threat. Scientists, in search of answers, race to map their journeys.
What is the true essence of Nature? In what way are we interconnected with it? Eddy, the protagonist of this story, explores an uncontaminated corner of the world and understands that everything on this planet is interconnected, and that humans are just a link in the chain that connects all things. Only when we free ourselves from our mentality of "dominant man" will we understand that Nature is the result of all relationships.
Through free diving, Eddy approaches the deep and mysterious world of the ocean, perceiving the extraordinary complexity and power of the interconnections between living elements in symbiosis, both aquatic and terrestrial. Like the communities that populate these environments (often in perfect harmony with the ocean itself), they represent an example of life in relation to nature, and can provide valuable lessons on how to protect and conserve this invaluable asset.
Eddy's sensitivity, in her search for understanding and connection with the natural world, could inspire many to take care of relationships as if they were precious corals, to capture the beauty of life and feel the energy of nature flowing in everything. It is time to consider Nature as an integral part of ourselves and to call ourselves by its same name.
THE WATER WILL TAKE US tells the story of the victims of the flood of 2019 in Iran, which happened in the three provinces of North, Central and South of the country and left a lot of damages. The main narrators are three women who reveal the causes of this incident and mismanagements and tell the story of the people who were left to fend for themselves during the flood and after.
Inspired by Herman Melville's epic tale, "Moby-Dick or The Whale", THE WHALE GUITAR: INSTRUMENT OF CHANGE follows a late-blooming singer/songwriter and former toy designer, Jen Long, as she acts on a startling vision and commissions the design and build of a remarkable custom electric guitar. Its body is "The Whale" itself as it snags the mad Captain Ahab in the tangled ropes of his own obsession and prepares to launch a boat of his whalers to their doom. The entire guitar re-interprets Melville's tale as an Anthropocene climate change warning, with the whale representing the seas and storms of climate change arising on this "third day" of late-stage capitalism.
Hundreds of guitarists, including J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., and Marissa Paternoster of Screaming Females, have played and signed this "Instrument of Change" to amplify the alarm to turn our ship of over-production and over-consumption around while there is still time. As the embroidered strap featuring Starbuck's last words implores: "Oh! Ahab, not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist."
AQUAVERSE is a story about disappearance and the quest for a refuge. Through the dive of a half-human, half-machine character, the film raises a paradox attached to the deep sea: that of a tangible and real world, but considered less real than our new virtual worlds. The "Aquaverse" as a place not occupied by humanity is in fact a parallel world.
The character does not fall into the trap of his own reflection but falls beyond it to lead the spectators in a wandering in the heart of a Mediterranean coral reef. We discover a mysterious biodiversity that seems to observe us quietly, as if unaware of the danger we represent for it. It is in the form of a phantom net that this danger will materialize, leaving the character alone in front of a plastic trap that closes little by little on humanity.
This is the story of how a nomad in Chad, while advocating for the rights of her community, has become a leader in the fight against climate change and a voice for Indigenous people across the planet.
The 2023 Water Warrior Award Presentation made posthumously to Rob Stewart and accepted on his behalf by his parents, Sandy and Brian Stewart. The presentation took place on November 17, 2023 at the in-person Water Docs Film Festival in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at the OISE Auditorium.
A beautiful tribute to the late filmmaker Rob Stewart (1979-2017) who is the recipient of the 2023 Water Docs Water Warrior Award.
In the tourism town of Livingstone, Zambia, a group of local men who make their living portering kayaks aspire to become safety kayakers on the Zambezi River. The proposed Batoka Gorge Hydroelectric Scheme threatens to flood the famous rapids of the Zambezi, and eliminate river related jobs.
West African waters have been overexploited for more than 40 years, largely by foreign fleets from Europe, Russia and Asia. The collapse of fish stocks threatens fishermen and their families, an important part of Senegalese society.
Check out our Best Feature Film and our Best Short/Mid-Length Film and discover for yourself why these are our 2023 award-winning films.
Our Climate Action Now! playlist features films with positive solutions to the climate crisis.
How does water influence the arts and vice-versa? These films will tantalize and inspire you with their artistry and beauty and, at times, their quirkiness.
The healing power of water has long been understood. These films will take you on the personal journey of healing of each of the films' protagonists.
Our opening night screening is all about flooding and sea-level rise and how we can continue with the status quo or we can adapt to this climate change reality.
"Inundation District" is our feature film (not available for streaming) which will be screened with "House of Adaptation" at the in-person event.
A selection of films that deal with the fallout from the global commercial fishing industry.
What are some of the positive solutions to the climate crisis that are happening right now? Can you imagine a solution, big or small, that could help move us toward a brighter, more sustainable future for everyone? How can you make a change in your own life and community that builds toward the future we all want to see? These films may help inspire you toward climate actions that matter.
A selection of short films to wet your whistle!
A selection of short films about utilizing Indigenous wisdom and knowledge of the land, the waters, and ecosystems in order to work together with nature to help navigate through the climate crisis.
ROB STEWART (Dec. 28, 1979-Jan. 31, 2017)
Rob was a biologist, conservationist, activist and filmmaker. His greatest impact was his two films, SHARKWATER and REVOLUTION, his books and the millions of supporters that carry on his mission worldwide. Born in 1979 and raised in Toronto, Rob graduated from the University of Western Ontario. He dedicated his life to conservation, saying: “Conservation is the preservation of human life. And, that, above all else is worth fighting for.”
Rob's films, SHARKWATER and REVOLUTION, are still, to this day, the number 1 and 3 Canadian documentaries of the last 15 years. They have been awarded more than 70 international awards and are viewed by over 125 million people. SHARKWATER has inspired worldwide bills to ban the importation or sale of fins, including Canadian Senator Michael MacDonald's Shark Fin Importation Ban, as well as bills before the US Senate and House. REVOLUTION was the first film to alert the world to the catastrophic effects of carbon emissions resulting in Ocean Acidification that would devastate the reefs (coral bleaching), kill 25% of the fish populations, and potentially the oceans themselves. His third film, SHARKWATER: EXTINCTION, which he was filming when he tragically drowned, addresses not just shark finning, but the use of shark products in cosmetics, food products, pet foods, livestock, and fertilizer.
He has inspired young filmmakers to follow in his footsteps, among them Julia Barnes with SEA OF LIFE; Natalie Lucier's TO THE ORCAS, WITH LOVE; and Madison Stewart, Australia's "Shark Girl". Rob changed the thinking of the conservationist movement. “We need to stop fighting against things and start fighting FOR what we want.” And he always remained optimistic and inspiring... “Fight for what's beautiful.”
Film festivals, universities, and conservation groups worldwide, continue to honour Rob with lifetime achievement awards, and this year, Water Docs is proud to present Rob (posthumously) with the 2023 Water Warrior Award.
Haven't got a lot of time? Check out these mid-length films with a message that will move you.
If you've got some time, we've got the perfect films to fill it up for you. Grab some snacks and be prepared to be entertained and informed.
