My Octopus Teacher is a 2020 documentary directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed and released as a Netflix Original. It documents the year filmmaker Craig Foster spent building a relationship with a wild common octopus in an underwater kelp forest in South Africa. The film won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the 93rd Academy Awards.
In 2018, Foster began freediving in a cold underwater kelp forest in a remote part of False Bay, near Cape Town, on the Cape Peninsula. The area is exposed to the Atlantic Ocean's cold Benguela Current. There, he encountered a young, curious octopus that caught his attention.
The film shows the gradual development of a close relationship between the man and the animal. Foster follows the octopus for almost a year, and she allows him to see how she sleeps, lives and feeds. The octopus often has to defend herself against pyjama sharks. In one attack, she loses an arm, retreats to her den and slowly regrows it over about three months.
In a later shark attack, the octopus displays much more creative ways of surviving, including clinging to the shark's back. After mating with a male octopus and laying many eggs, she dies naturally while caring for them. Later, a shark takes her dead body.
Foster describes the relationship as an experience that felt like mentorship: the octopus taught him a lesson about the fragility of life and humanity's connection with nature. This experience also carries over into his relationship with his son Tom, who becomes a diver and marine biology student.
The film was produced in collaboration with the Sea Change Project, Off The Fence and ZDF Enterprises, with Ellen Windemuth as executive producer. Underwater filmmaker Roger Horrocks served as director of photography, while Foster and Horrocks shot additional footage. Some underwater footage from the same location, which does not appear in the film, had previously been included in the fifth episode of Blue Planet II (2017).
Foster was also a producer through his involvement in the Sea Change Project, while his wife, Indian environmental journalist Swati Thiyagarajan, was production manager. The project took years to complete and was the first South African nature documentary to become a Netflix Original.
My Octopus Teacher was released on Netflix on September 7, 2020, and received warm reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 44 reviews were positive, with an average rating of 7.7/10, while Metacritic gave it an average score of 82/100, indicating “universal acclaim.” Critics described it as a moving look at how a meaningful bond can overcome almost any barrier, and it was later parodied in the 2022 Documentary Now episode “My Monkey Grifter.”
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