Pippa Ehrlich is a natural history filmmaker and award-winning environmental journalist, specializing in the field of marine science and conservation. Ehrlich has worked with some of the world’s top marine researchers and underwater photographers and is editor of the acclaimed photographic book “Sea Change: Primal Joy and the Art of Underwater Tracking.”

“My Octopus Teacher” was scheduled to screen at the 2020 Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival. A digital version of the fest has been organized due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hot Docs Festival Online launched May 28. “My Octopus Teacher” has opted not to screen in the digital fest.

“My Octopus Teacher” is co-directed by James Reed.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

PE: The film follows the life of my friend and colleague Craig Foster. He grew up on the shores of the Great African Sea Forest — the kelp forest that grows at the very tip of Africa. Craig was a very successful filmmaker, but after two decades of hard work, he completely burnt himself out and swore he would never pick up a camera again. He went through a kind of breakdown and in his desperation to recover, he started swimming in the icy Atlantic ocean without a wetsuit. After a year of that, he became curious about the animals he was seeing underwater everyday and bought a small camera with which to document them.

Things really got interesting when he saw a little octopus that intrigued him. Day after day, he went to visit her den and little by little he won her trust. To keep up with her movements, he had to find a way of tracking her underwater and during the year that he spent with her, he witnessed unimaginable scenes — some heartwarming and others heartbreaking. It’s a love story about a friendship between a human being and a wild animal, but its also a love story about our relationship with the natural world.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

PE: I met Craig about five years ago and had been diving with him regularly for about six months before he asked me if I would like to be involved with the project. I remember when he sent me the treatment, I just had a really strong reaction to it. I think I started crying at my desk.

I grew up in a land-locked city, but my grandparents had a holiday home in Cape Town and I learned to swim on a beach only a few kilometers away from where the octopus had lived. This environment has a strange power over me, and the opportunity to explore it through Craig’s story was very exciting. His yearning to understand and experience nature on a deeper level is something that resonates deeply with me.

A few days after I read the treatment, Craig played me some of his footage and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. To my knowledge, this was the first time the story of a wild marine animal had been documented to this extent, and much of the behavior that Craig captured has never been filmed before. After that I was all-in.

W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?

PE: I think what’s powerful about the film is the fact that there’s this big South African guy who is telling a deeply intimate story about an animal that is essentially a modified snail. He takes us into this fragile creature’s world and she transforms from an underwater alien into a protagonist that we can really relate to and care about. At a minimum, I think that viewers will make an emotional connection with her, but I really hope that the bigger message that comes through will be an exploration of our own identity and fragility as part of the living planet.

We chose — and it was an agonizing decision — not to have any overt conservation narratives in the film, but that message seems to be coming through subliminally. We recently won the Best Jury Award for a Feature Film at the EarthxFilm festival and one of the judges described the film as “political,” “feminist,” and showing “respect for motherhood.” That really excited me.

In terms of a more specific conservation agenda, Craig and I are part of a collective called the Sea Change Project, which aims to promote and protect The Great African Sea Forest — the “octopus teacher’s” home. This is one of the most beautiful and biodiverse environments on Earth, but most people don’t know anything about it. What we really hope is that the film makes me people fall in love with kelp forests and put energy into protecting them.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

PE: There were a few. For a start, apart from the scenes we filmed with cinematographer Roger Horrocks, Craig wanted to shoot everything on breath hold, without wetsuits, which is okay in summer when the water temperature is about 18 degrees Celsius. But when we started filming in winter 2017, the water was around 12 degrees Celsius. I had to do a lot of training to adapt my body for long shoots in the freezing ocean and my breath hold had to get as good as Craig’s because I needed to capture him swimming in and out of frame.

I also had to learn to find an animal who’s entire evolutionary strategy is being invisible, and we were a few months into the filmmaking process before I got the hang of that.

The more agonizing challenges came with how we would actually tell the story. The octopus’ story was by far the most compelling narrative, but to give it meaning we had to find a way of setting up Craig’s story — which spanned 50 years — in just a few minutes, without letting it become too much of a distraction. We also had thousands of hours of footage to go through because he has been filming in the kelp forest for nearly 10 years now. It took months just to watch everything.

I think for me personally, the biggest challenges played out in my own head. I have never made a full-length film before and as the project developed and the budget got bigger and we rallied an increasingly experienced team around us, the stakes just got higher and higher.

The opportunity to work with so many incredible filmmakers — including editor Jinx Godfrey — was mind-blowing for me, but also terrifying. I have never experienced imposter syndrome before and some days I felt so intimidated by the magnitude of the wave I was on that I struggled to get out of bed.

This is the amazing thing about filmmaking though: it truly is a team sport and learning from Craig, James Reed, our executive producer Ellen Windemuth, and Jinx was one of the most fulfilling parts of the process. I’d like to say I won’t go through that kind of work-related terror again, but I suspect that when it comes to filmmaking, it’s just part of the process — especially if you are trying to tell a story that really matters to you.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

PE: This was another big challenge. At the beginning, we had zero budget and no guarantees that anyone would see the the film’s potential. I had a well-paid, easy-going job that sent me all over the world to write about sharks and work with amazing photographers and scientists, but to make this film, I had to take the biggest risk of my life and resign. For the first year and a half, we worked with almost no funding at all. The Sea Change Project stepped in to provide a living stipend for me during that time and later, our distributor Off the Fence came on board and they funded the next phase of production until, eventually, we found a buyer.

We only received our first payment more than two years into the project. We were working out of Craig’s house for all of that time, using his gear and eating endless amounts of food cooked by his wife, Swati, who is also a brilliant environmental storyteller. Craig took an enormous risk, but he kept his conviction the whole way through and, in the end, we got a decent budget.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

PE: When I was a kid growing up in Johannesburg, I was obsessed with movies and television as a kind of escape. I loved watching trailers and reading film reviews and could spend hours wondering around a video store. What I really wanted as a little kid was to be a game ranger, but that just was just not an option for my parents. So I went to university and studied journalism and documentary filmmaking. The great thing was that because I studied in a small rural town surrounded by open space and a short drive from the beach, I rediscovered my love and obsession with nature and especially the ocean.

I realized that I didn’t want to pursue a career in one of the big urban filmmaking centers. But the natural history industry in South Africa is tiny and I didn’t have a single contact. In the end, I had to follow a very long and winding path, but eventually I was lucky enough to find a way to make films without giving up my connection to the wild.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

PE: The best advice I have received is to only do something if you really want to do it because time is the most precious resource we have, and filmmaking demands enormous amounts of energy. I’m still learning to stick to that, though, because life can be pressurized and it’s very easy to take on jobs for the wrong reasons.

The second best piece of advice was to tell stories about my own backyard. It’s very tempting — especially in natural history filmmaking — to seek out exotic environments to shoot in, but if you are lucky enough to live in a place with stories on your doorstep, it’s always better to work on subjects that you can get to know deeply without huge amounts of money, effort, and pressure.

W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?

PE: The first is obvious. Making a film takes a huge amount of time and energy, so make sure that you work on something that fascinates and inspires you because you will need to take a lot of risks and stay motivated for a very long time.

The second — and I suppose this is aimed more at women, but I actually think it’s just as relevant for men — is to watch out for bullies. There is a huge amount of power play in this industry, and most of us are very attached to our work, which makes us vulnerable. Overt bullying is one thing, but what’s much worse is when someone manipulates you into doubting yourself. This is the worst kind of disempowerment because impactful filmmaking requires a huge amount of soul-bearing. To be able to do that, vulnerability and self-belief are your most critical allies.

The most important piece of advice, though, is to find a good mentor who has your back. This is something that I learned from Craig. Often it’s our own self-confidence that limits us from creating things, so finding someone who believes in you and who you can trust to encourage you, help you to refine your ideas, and provide constructive feedback can make the difference between finishing a project successfully or never starting at all.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

PE: “Whale Rider,” directed by Niki Caro. I saw it when I was a teenager and it pulled a string inside me that I didn’t realize was there. When we started making “My Octopus Teacher,” I showed it to Craig as a reference. It’s about Pai, a girl who was born to become the leader of her people and maintain their bond with the ocean, but because she is a female, she is forbidden from following that path by her grandfather. In the end, destiny forces him to accept that she should take his place as leader.

We often hear whales singing underwater and every time, I picture the scene of her being carried further and further out to sea on the back of whale. I come from a very different culture, but I always loved being outside and the frustration of being told that certain activities were only for boys is something that I can remember. Between that, her incredible competence as a diver, and her connection to the ocean, Pai became an archetype of my childhood.

W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?

PE: For the last four years, I have been diving in the kelp forest almost every single day and it’s become an important foundation of my life. The cold water has been incredible for keeping my mind and body healthy — and having powerful experiences in nature is hugely reassuring and meaningful for me — so being banned from the sea has been very difficult. But in other ways, it has been amazing to have so little pressure. We only finished the film in December and then Sea Change Project had six weeks to create a musical piece called the “Kelp Forest Anthem,” which became part of Yo-Yo Ma’s “Day of Action” when he came to perform in South Africa.

It’s really been a crazy three years and I have enjoyed being able to rest. Rather than creating things myself, its been wonderful to have some time and space to absorb other people creations — I’ve especially enjoyed getting into Neil Gaiman’s work. Just before lockdown I borrowed “The Sandman” comic book series from a friend and it’s been blowing my mind.