My Octopus Teacher (2020)

There are documentaries that set out to inform, and there are documentaries that set out to move you, and occasionally one arrives that manages both without quite trying to do either. My Octopus Teacher, released in 2020 and produced through The Sea Change Project and Off the Fence, is very much in that second camp. It follows Craig Foster, a South African filmmaker and naturalist, who after a period of personal and professional exhaustion begins a daily routine of free-diving in the cold Atlantic kelp forests near Cape Point, at the southern tip of Africa. Over the course of roughly a year, he encounters a single common octopus, returns to her den again and again, and documents what becomes a genuinely unusual relationship between a human being and a wild animal. The film runs to 85 minutes and was co-directed by James Reed and Pippa Ehrlich, with Foster's son Tom also appearing on screen.

Reed and Ehrlich were working with remarkable source material, both in terms of the footage itself and the personal story at its centre, and the film sits comfortably within a tradition of nature documentary that prioritises the individual encounter over the sweeping overview. South Africa's film output tends to be far better known abroad for genre fare, and a quiet, meditative piece like this (shot almost entirely underwater, or on the shores of the Western Cape) represents something genuinely different from, say, the country's more commercially minded productions, including others that have turned up on this blog like Runs in the Family (2023) and Adera (2009). The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2021, which brought it a great deal of attention it might otherwise have struggled to find outside of festival circuits.

Craig Foster is not a traditional documentary subject. He is the person holding the camera for much of the footage, which gives the film an unusually personal, first-person quality, somewhere between nature doc and confessional essay. His narration is calm and considered, and his son Tom's presence adds a quiet generational thread to proceedings. As documentaries go, it is polished but unhurried, the kind of thing that asks you to slow down with it rather than keep pace. Fans of other documentaries on this site will recognise that quality from films like Next Goal Wins (2014) and Nom Tèw (2009), where the human story and the observed world are wound tightly together.

A-Z World Movie Tour South Africa My Octopus Teacher completely surprised me. I’ll admit, I went in skeptical. 90 minutes about a man swimming in cold seaweed and befriending an octopus? Really? But it’s not really about the octopus at all. It’s about Craig, the filmmaker, and his quiet journey through burnout, anxiety, and emotional disconnection. His daily dives into the kelp forests of South Africa become a kind of therapy, rituals of presence, patience, and wonder. And as he builds a bond (of sorts) with this wild, intelligent creature, you start to see how nature can heal, even in the most unexpected ways. The underwater cinematography is stunning, intimate, fluid, almost dreamlike. You feel the cold, the silence, the mystery of that world. And the octopus... She’s incredible, clever, playful, resilient. There are moments of pure magic: her riding a shark’s back, her camouflage vanishing into the rocks, the way she trusts him just enough to let him watch. It’s beautiful, yes, and deeply moving, especially when you know how it ends... But let’s be honest, it’s also one note. The tone never really shifts. It’s meditative from start to finish, which works for a while, but after an hour, you’ve kind of seen the rhythm: dive, observe, reflect, repeat. It doesn’t need to be longer than it is, but it doesn’t vary much either. Still, as a story of connection, loss, and finding peace in the natural world, it hits hard. Profound in places, repetitive in others, but ultimately touching. Just don’t expect action.

That tension between the genuinely moving and the occasionally repetitive is something I keep coming back to. There is real craft here, and real feeling, and I don't want to undercut that. But the film works best when you let it wash over you rather than scrutinise its structure too closely. As nature documentaries go, it earns its reputation, even if it doesn't quite transcend the limitations of its own rhythm. Sometimes the most honest thing you can say about a film is that it is beautiful and flawed in roughly equal measure, and that you're glad you watched it anyway.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 2020  | Watched: 2025-09-05

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for My Octopus Teacher (2020) on YouTube

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Kids · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon US

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from South Africa: Death Race 2 (2010) · Rising Storm (1989) · Adera (2009) · Runs in the Family (2023)
More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More documentary: Letter from Siberia (1957) · Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Style Wars (1983) · Here and Elsewhere (1976)