Author and wildlife rehabber Terry Masear has an ambitious goal: to save every injured hummingbird in Los Angeles. But the path to survival is fraught with danger. This heart-expanding Sundance hit introduces audiences to Terry’s diminutive patients through breathtaking slow-motion photography and emotional storytelling. Over the course of director Sally Aitken’s moving documentary, we become deeply invested in baby hummingbirds like Cactus and Wasabi, celebrating their tiny victories and lamenting their tragedies. Through Terry’s eyes, each bird becomes memorable, mighty and heroic. Her compassion and empathy serves as a reminder that grace can be found in the smallest of acts and the tiniest of creatures.
A soothing film. The subjects of Every Little Thing… produce awe, both for the birds’ remarkable bodies and Masear’s immense joy in caring for them.
Alissa Wilkinson, The New York Times
Overflows with fondness and hope… Director Sally Aitken’s nature documentary comes as a balm in a season aching for uplift.
Lisa Kennedy, Variety
Big-hearted… effortlessly riveting. Offers a vision of compassion as a way of life.
Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter
Sally Aitken
Terry Masear
USA
2024
English
Book Tickets
Tuesday January 28
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Screenwriter
Sally Aitken
Cinematography
Nathan Barlow, Dan Freene
Editor
Tania Michel Nehme
Original Music
Caitlin Yeo
Also Playing
Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat
In January 1961, seven months after Congolese independence, Patrice Lumumba is assassinated. In excavating the history of this political murder, this essay-film traces the complex and unlikely intersections of American jazz and Cold War geopolitics.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
A tense mystery and an act of radical protest, this film tells the story of an Iranian lawyer who’s lost his handgun and knows someone in his family took it. With every moment, his wife and daughters grow more afraid of him–yet none of them will confess…
To Kill a Mockingbird
Robert Mulligan's beloved film adaptation of Harper Lee's novel is the tale of a white lawyer, Atticus Finch, defending an innocent black man accused of rape in a small southern town in the 1930s. As selected by VIFF Premium member Margot Pratt.
Every Little Thing
If you thought Flow was an emotional rollercoaster, wait til you meet Cactus and Wasabi, baby hummingbirds fighting for their lives under the loving care of hummingbird-whisperer Terry Masear, an Angelino who makes it her mission to nurse injured birds.