My Octopus Teacher

My Octopus Teacher is a 2020 Netflix documentary directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed, following filmmaker Craig Foster across a year he spent forging a close relationship with a wild common octopus in a kelp forest off South Africa's coast. Foster free-dived daily to observe the octopus's behavior, using the encounter to explore themes of interspecies connection, mentorship and the natural world's underappreciated intelligence. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 93rd Academy Awards along with a BAFTA, a Producers Guild award and an American Cinema Editors award, and became one of the most widely watched nature documentaries of its era.