THE COVE

Director: Louie Psihoyos
With: Richard O’Barry
Run Time: 90 minutes
Country: USA
Year: 2009
Language: English
Rating:

“I would love to shut down the cove. And I’d like people to think twice before they go to a dolphin-arium. When you train these intelligent animals to do stupid human tricks, it says more about our intelligence than it does theirs.” – Louie Psihoyos, The Cove

Winner of no less than two audience awards – at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival – The Cove is one of the most compelling documentaries of recent years.

This riveting film is both a thriller and a harsh indictment of our reckless harvesting of ocean life. Louie Psihoyos’s film follows Richard O’Barry on his quest to uncover what turns out to be a massive massacre of dolphins in a small town in Japan. Once the world’s leading dolphin trainer, working on everyone’s favourite sixties television show, Flipper, O’Barry is now the world’s leading activist against the capture and training of dolphins.

Surrounded by a team of technology experts, daredevils and Canadian deep-sea divers, O’Barry and Psihoyos set out to capture on film what an entire community and the Japanese government have hidden from the world for years. The film exposes not only the tragedy of dolphin slaughtering in Japan, but also the dangerously high levels of mercury in dolphin meat and seafood, as well as the depletion of our ocean’s fisheries by worldwide seafood consumption. The Cove is essential viewing!

“Documentaries don’t get much more compelling.” – Justin Chang, Variety

Reviews: www.metacritic.com/film/titles/cove

Official Site: www.takepart.com/thecove

DocsPlus09 Schedule October 19 - The Cove October 19 - Every Little Step October 20 - Act of God October 20 - Man on Wire October 21 - Food Inc. October 21 - Unmistaken Child October 22 - Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action October 22 - Prom Night in Mississippi