Ocean with David Attenborough, UK, 2025, 95 minutes, Colour. Directors Colin Butfield, Toby Nowlan, Keith Scholey
Renowned observer and commentator on the world and the environment, David Attenborough, turned 99 on 8 May 2025. To celebrate the occasion, there is his film, Ocean, as well as an accompanying book, Ocean, Earth’s Last Wilderness. Over so many decades, with significant films and television programs, David Attenborough has contributed significantly to environmental consciousness.
With Ocean, and fine photography sea surface as well as underwater camera work, Attenborough focuses on aspects of marine biology and developments in recent decades. He highlights the destructive human behaviour, aspects of fishing, trawling the ocean bottom, disruptive, threatening the life of oceans and his highlighting that life on land depends on healthy oceans.
As with Attenborough’s documentaries, there are extraordinary pictures of marine life, the vitality, creativity, extraordinary variety of life in our oceans. Ocean screens during May in cinemas and moves to the Disney plus channel during June.
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Wilding, UK, 2023, 75 minutes, Colour. Directed by David Allen.
To complement Ocean, there is another British documentary, Wilding, which is solidly land and Earth-based. It is based on a book by Isabella Tree, an environmental story, an experiment, over more than 15 years in south-eastern England. While there is some footage of the actual environmentalists, actors portray the couple in the present, presenting a first-person commentary on the wilding, re-wilding of their property.
The film focuses on a couple inheriting a country estate, practically a castle, and wider grounds. However, they discover the earth is tired, making the point that when soil loses its nutrients, it becomes merely, dirt. With reference to a number of experimenters on revitalising earth and soil, they begin an experiment, with some hostile reactions from neighbours, with slow evaluation and cooperation by government authorities.
The advice they receive is to introduce some wild horses, other animals, revitalising the life of trees, waterways (especially with extraordinary beavers), over long years with hopes and disappointments, the revitalising of flora and fauna, the return of so many animals and birds, returning landscapes to what they were like hundred years ago. It is visually exciting as well is encouraging.
The two films show how ocean and land need revitalising, vision to save our future.
Garage/Madmen
Wilding released 22 May