Whales Without Walls is a short film that tells the story of our work to create North America’s first seaside sanctuary for whales being retired from marine entertainment parks.
Since its premier in January 2020 at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, our short film has made some waves in the film festival circuit as an official selection of several North American film festivals and as an award recipient at several of them.
The 5½-minute film opens with stunning footage of orcas in the wild. Charles Vinick, Executive Director of the Whale Sanctuary Project, draws on his work returning the captive orca Keiko to the ocean in 1998 to describe what life is like for whales in the open ocean, where they can travel 100 miles a day.
And Lori Marino, our President and leading expertise on the intelligence and cognition of whales and dolphins, shows us the amazing complexity of the orca brain (“They’re right up there with us”) and how these highly intelligent and sensitive animals simply shut down in the confines of a concrete tank.
The film concludes by giving us a real sense of what life will be like for whales when they are retired to sanctuaries.
Please feel free to share the film widely and support the work of creating a seaside sanctuary for these amazing marine mammals.
Whales Without Walls
Official Selection:
• Santa Barbara International Film Festival
• Wildlife Conservation Film Festival
• Florida Environmental Film Festival
• Big Apple Film Festival and Screenplay Competition
• International Ocean Film Festival
• Niagara Falls International Short Film Festival
• DocLands Documentary Film Festival
• Mountainfilm Festival
Award of Merit:
Best Shorts Competition
• Documentary film category
Award of Excellence:
IndieFEST Film Awards Competition
• Nature/Environment/Wildlife category
• Documentary Short category
Humanitarian Award:
• IndieFEST Film Awards Outstanding Achievement
ImpactDOC Awards
• Documentary Short category
Best Documentary Short:
• Toronto Short Film Festival
• North Hollywood Cinefest
Finalist Award:
• Canada Shorts – Canadian & International Short Film Fest