Exclusive: Discovery+ is just over a month old and the streamer is already restocking its slate of original documentaries.
The digital platform has added eight documentaries, including a number of festival titles, to its slate. This comes ahead of its virtual TCA presentation.
Films include My Beautiful Stutter, Future People: The Family of Donor 5114, The Walrus and the Whistleblower, Groomed, Miracle Fishing: Kidnapped Abroad, Genius Factory, Apocalypse ’45 and Yellowstone: Super Volcanoes.
My Beautiful Stutter, which launches March 11, follows five kids who stutter, ages 9 to 18, from all over the United States and all walks of life. After experiencing a lifetime of bullying and stigmatization, these children meet others who stutter at an interactive arts-based program, The Stuttering Association for the Young, based in New York City. It is directed by Ryan Gielen (Stop the Bleeding) and exec produced by Paul Rudd, Mariska Hargitay, Peter Hermann, George Springer and Patrick James Lynch...
The digital platform has added eight documentaries, including a number of festival titles, to its slate. This comes ahead of its virtual TCA presentation.
Films include My Beautiful Stutter, Future People: The Family of Donor 5114, The Walrus and the Whistleblower, Groomed, Miracle Fishing: Kidnapped Abroad, Genius Factory, Apocalypse ’45 and Yellowstone: Super Volcanoes.
My Beautiful Stutter, which launches March 11, follows five kids who stutter, ages 9 to 18, from all over the United States and all walks of life. After experiencing a lifetime of bullying and stigmatization, these children meet others who stutter at an interactive arts-based program, The Stuttering Association for the Young, based in New York City. It is directed by Ryan Gielen (Stop the Bleeding) and exec produced by Paul Rudd, Mariska Hargitay, Peter Hermann, George Springer and Patrick James Lynch...
- 2/11/2021
- by Peter White
- Deadline Film + TV
It's one thing to fight for a end to the keeping of marine mammals in amusement parks because it's something you're ethically opposed to. it's another to do it because one of those marine mammals is your friend.
The Walrus and the Whistleblower tells the story of Phil Demers and his parental feelings towards a walrus named Smooshi whose residence in Niagara Falls' Marineland gives him serious cause for concern. It's easy enough to understand his misgivings when we see footage of other animals there being mistreated or showing signs of serious ill health - footage that Marineland has not even tried to explain. Easy, too, to understand the bond between them from watching footage of them at play back when Phil worked as an animal trainer - the so-called 'walrus whisperer'. This much, however, could be communicated in a short. Nathalie Bibeau's feature length documentary fills most of the rest.
The Walrus and the Whistleblower tells the story of Phil Demers and his parental feelings towards a walrus named Smooshi whose residence in Niagara Falls' Marineland gives him serious cause for concern. It's easy enough to understand his misgivings when we see footage of other animals there being mistreated or showing signs of serious ill health - footage that Marineland has not even tried to explain. Easy, too, to understand the bond between them from watching footage of them at play back when Phil worked as an animal trainer - the so-called 'walrus whisperer'. This much, however, could be communicated in a short. Nathalie Bibeau's feature length documentary fills most of the rest.
- 11/24/2020
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
"I am the creation that MarineLand hoped to never create. I am their worst nightmare." Gravitas Ventures has released an official trailer for an activism documentary titled The Walrus and The Whistleblower, made by Canadian filmmaker Nathalie Bibeau. The doc won the Top Audience Award at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Canada. Part-time mailman and ex-trainer at MarineLand in Niagara Falls, Phil Demers (follow him @walruswhisperer) is a whistleblower who's sued for $1.5 million for plotting to steal a walrus, starting a personal quest against the backdrop to end marine mammal captivity. "The Walrus and the Whistleblower is a stranger-than fiction tale that plays out against the swell of a paradigm shift in our relationship with animals. At its heart are questions of compassion for others, humans and animals alike, the nuances of all our stories, and the hills we are willing to die on." I almost always enjoy these invigorating activism docs,...
- 10/1/2020
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Gravitas to distribute in Us, holds international rights.
Raven Banner’s specialty distribution label Northern Banner Releasing has acquired Canadian rights from Bunbury Films to Hot Docs audience award winner The Walrus And The Whistleblower.
Nathalie Bibeau produced and directed the film about Phil Demers aka the ‘Walrus Whisperer’, a former animal trainer who is being sued by his former employer MarineLand in Ontario after blowing the whistle on what he claims to be animal abuse.
Bunbury Films’ Frederic Bohbot produced The Walrus And The Whistleblower and negotiated the rights deal with Northern Banner partner Michael Paszt during the recent Cannes virtual market.
Raven Banner’s specialty distribution label Northern Banner Releasing has acquired Canadian rights from Bunbury Films to Hot Docs audience award winner The Walrus And The Whistleblower.
Nathalie Bibeau produced and directed the film about Phil Demers aka the ‘Walrus Whisperer’, a former animal trainer who is being sued by his former employer MarineLand in Ontario after blowing the whistle on what he claims to be animal abuse.
Bunbury Films’ Frederic Bohbot produced The Walrus And The Whistleblower and negotiated the rights deal with Northern Banner partner Michael Paszt during the recent Cannes virtual market.
- 7/3/2020
- by 36¦Jeremy Kay¦54¦
- ScreenDaily
The 2013 documentary “Blackfish” was a gamechanger for animal rights activists that turned SeaWorld’s abusive treatment of Orca whales into a national issue. “The Walrus and the Whistleblower” may not contain quite such breadth, but it’s a natural extension of this urgent subgenre, with the intimate dynamic between one man and his beloved furry marine animal coming across as both devastating and more than a little surreal.
The saga of Phil Demers, the former trainer at Niagara Falls theme park Marineland, has many strange chapters, but director Nathalie Bibeau’s first feature assembles them into a fascinating overview. When Demers defected from Marineland in 2012, he embarked on a winding path to rescue his beloved walrus from captivity, and that saga is at once alarming and strange. Saddled with a $1.5 million lawsuit from Marineland, Demers takes his crusade to the streets, but the battle stretches on. While the movie gets...
The saga of Phil Demers, the former trainer at Niagara Falls theme park Marineland, has many strange chapters, but director Nathalie Bibeau’s first feature assembles them into a fascinating overview. When Demers defected from Marineland in 2012, he embarked on a winding path to rescue his beloved walrus from captivity, and that saga is at once alarming and strange. Saddled with a $1.5 million lawsuit from Marineland, Demers takes his crusade to the streets, but the battle stretches on. While the movie gets...
- 6/11/2020
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
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