EXCLUSIVE: The Miami Film Festival will host the world premiere of Resident Orca, a documentary about dramatic efforts to free a killer whale that had been held in captivity at the Miami Seaquarium for over 50 years.
The film written, directed, and produced by Sarah Sharkey Pearce and Simon Schneider will make its debut on Saturday, April 6 (at the Silverspot Cinema), with an additional screening set for Tuesday, April 9 (Regal South Beach). We have your first look at the film in the trailer above.
Resident Orca examines “the unfolding story of a captive whale’s fight for survival and freedom,” according to a release. “After decades of failed attempts to bring her home, an unlikely partnership between Indigenous matriarchs, a billionaire philanthropist, killer whale experts, and the aquarium’s new owner take on the impossible task of freeing Lolita, captured 53 years ago as a baby, only to spend the rest of her life performing in the smallest killer whale tank in North America.”
Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, aka Lolita/Tokitae, in her enclosure at the Miami Seaquarium
Everyday Films
In the trailer, a man describes the circumstances of the young orca’s capture decades ago. “Babies were being pushed away from their mothers, lassoed, netted,” he says. Another man exclaims, “Talk about pain? You should hear 30 or 40 whales screaming!”
The film marks the feature directorial debut of Pearce and Schneider. Executive producers of Resident Orca include Squil-le-he-le Raynell Morris and Tah-Mahs Ellie Kinley of Lummi Nation, James Costa (Welcome to Chechnya), and Lynne Kirby (Water&Power: A California Heist).
Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, aka Lolita/Tokitae performs at the Miami Seaquarium in 2000.
Patrick Farrell/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
In a report last October, the local NBC affiliate TV station in Miami said, “Animal rights activists had been fighting for years to have Lolita freed from her tank at the Seaquarium. The park’s relatively new owner, The Dolphin Company, and the nonprofit Friends of Toki announced a plan in March to possibly move her to a natural sea pen in the Pacific Northwest, with the financial backing of Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay.”
Lolita was the name given to the orca after she taken to the Miami Seaquarium and trained to perform for audiences. But others referred to her by different appellations; in Lhaq’temish, the language of the Indigenous Lummi people of the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia bordering the ocean where the orca was seized, she was called Sk’aliCh’ehl-tenaut. Still others called her by another name, as the Washington Post reported last year: “Her name, Tokitae — Toki for short — was given to her by the first veterinarian to care for her at the Miami Seaquarium; it was a nod to her region of origin, a Coast Salish greeting roughly translated as ‘nice day, pretty colors.’ But to audiences packed into the Seaquarium, she was known only as Lolita.”
The 41st Annual Miami Film Festival runs from April 5-14.
Watch the trailer for Resident Orca above.