In 2019, Simon Schneider and Sarah Sharkey Pearce set out to make a film about the last living Southern Resident Killer Whale in captivity, an orca named Lolita (or “Toki”), who had been captured in Puget Sound in 1970. Lolita spent more than half a century in the Miami Seaquarium’s “Whale Bowl’, a tank that measured 80 x 35 foot, and only 6 metres deep. As filming progressed, they joined a coalition of environmentalists, billionaire philanthopists, disenchanted ex trainers, and Lummi elders, all fighting to have the aging and ailing orca returned to her ocean home. It proves a long and painful odyssey, but also provides remarkable insights into how humans and animals feel about each other.
Apr 2: Q&A with director Simon Schneider & Tah-Mahs Ellie Kinely
Sarah Sharkey Pearce & Simon Schneider
Squil-le-he-le Raynell Morris, Tah-Mahs Ellie Kinely
Canada
2024
English
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Screenwriter
Sarah Sharkey Pearce, Simon Schneider
Cinematography
Simon Schneider
Editor
Tony Kent
Original Music
Josh Zubot, Jesse Zubot
Also Playing
Train Dreams
A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.
Caravaggio
In the latest from Exhibition on Screen, co-directors David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky shed light not only on Caravaggio's paintings, but his life, often kept half-hidden in the same chiaroscuro tones he shaded his masterpieces with.
Köln 75
The true story behind the greatest solo concert in jazz history, this is Keith Jarrett's legendary 1975 Köln Concert — as organized by 18-year-old rebel music promoter Vera Brandes. Fun, inventive and feminist, it's the Bend It Like Beckham of jazz films.
La Belle at the Movies + Apostles of Cinema
Cecilia Zoppelletto's lyrical documentary examines the fate of cinephilia in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo's capital city, currently without a single operating cinema. + Apostles of Cinema (Tanzania, 17 min)
Wisdom of Happiness
An audience with the Dalia Lama, who, at 90, looks back on his life and shares the tenets of Buddhism as a practical guide to surviving the 21st Century with joy and compassion.
Left-Handed Girl
Co-written and edited by Sean Baker (Anora), Shi-Ching Tsou's heartwarming solo feature debut follows a single mom in Taipei who is too consumed with her noodle stand to keep tabs on her five-year-old daughter's burgeoning shoplifting habit.