Internationally Acclaimed Wildlife Filmmaker Martin Dohrn’s THE BIRDS to Premiere at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
Academy Award-Winning Passion Pictures and Academy Award-Nominated HHMI Tangled Bank Studios Debut 4th Film Collaboration and First Short
February 10, 2025 (Chevy Chase, MD): HHMI Tangled Bank Studios and Passion Planet, a Passion Pictures company, will premiere their latest feature short film, THE BIRDS, at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival on Monday, February 17 at 5:45 p.m. MST.
Told through the cinematic experience of wildlife filmmaker Martin Dohrn, THE BIRDS finds meaning and pathos as it gets up close to one of England's little-known wonders of the natural world. As Martin chases down the twisting and turning of giant flocks of shore birds on England’s Wash estuary, he attempts to literally record evolution in action as a peregrine falcon scythes through the mind-blowing murmurations – astonishingly large numbers of birds flying in synchronized patterns and creating shapes in the air. Ultimately, this feature short reveals important insights not only into the hidden mechanisms of nature, but also into the psyche of a man facing up to the end of his career.
The film has been selected as one of 10 finalists in the Best Short Competition at the Big Sky Festival. Winners will be announced in a special presentation of the festival on Thursday February 20th.
“I had always wanted to spend more time watching and filming birds in a place like this, and now I could allow myself to be mesmerized by the incredible patterns of flocking birds - thousands of brains working together - and I suppose a search for meaning,” said Martin Dohrn. “The only obstacle now was myself and my decaying faculties. Did I really still have the reflexes to film a peregrine falcon zooming by at a hundred miles an hour? Or would my age deny me?”
“There is something profoundly life-affirming about witnessing Martin's relentless passion for documenting the natural world, especially in this unlikely place, said director David Allen. “Drawing on a lifetime of expertise, facing up to the limitations of his aging body, he pours everything into uncovering the secrets of this place. His dedication to documenting this evolutionary dance between predator and prey offers an experience that compels us to see the wonders of nature with fresh eyes.”
“Not only do we get to see the stunning spectacle and the science of these birds and this location,” said Head of HHMI Tangled Bank Studios Jared Lipworth, “we get a unique window into Martin’s mind, his process, and the mental and technical challenges this kind of ambitious project serves up.
THE BIRDS is produced by three-time Oscar-winning production company Passion Pictures, whose films include “Searching for Sugarman” and “Superman—the Christopher Reeve Story;” and Emmy and Peabody Award-winning HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, whose film “All that Breathes” won best documentary at the Sundance, Cannes and the BFI London film Festival and was nominated for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards. This is the fourth film co-produced by these two studios following the Emmy Award-winning film “The Serengeti Rules” (2018), Emmy-Nominated “My Garden of a Thousand Bees” (2021); and “Wilding” (2024), UK’s top grossing documentary in 2024.
Duration 40 minutes
Key Credits
Executive Producers
David Guy Elisco
Sean B. Carroll
Jared Lipworth
Andrew Ruhemann
Director
Martin Dohrn (A Film By)
David Allen
Editor
Steve White
Producers
Amber Beattie
Gaby Bastyra
Music
Fraser Purdie
Lara Agar
About Martin Dohrn
Martin Dohrn is an award-winning film maker who has been producing specialist landmark natural history films for more than 30 years with credits extending to director, producer, cinematographer, and writer. Dohrn has devised game-changing techniques in low-light and macro filming, allowing audiences to see the natural world in an entirely different way. Leading the field with his range of world-renowned tech, he developed a Colour Starlight Camera, delivering color footage from some of the darkest locations on Earth, and Frankencam, which provides micro-motion control for filming small things in the wild. Martin’s ground-breaking films include Mara Nights for BBC, BAFTA nominated Killer Ants for BBC / Discovery, Night of the Lion for National Geographic and BAFTA nominated David Attenborough's Light on Earth for Terra Mater Factual Studios, CuriosityStream and BBC. The National Geographic film Great Migrations earned him an Emmy for craft cinematography, adding to the multiple awards for his innovative children’s series Smalltalk Diaries. Martin’s latest film, My Garden of a Thousand Bees, was yet another venture into new territory, as wild bees needed a whole new range of techniques and lenses to bring them within range of the average viewer. That film, made with David Allen and Gaby Bastyra at Passion Pictures and HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, was Emmy-nominated and took home prizes from top film festival around the world, including a Golden Panda at Wildscreen and the 2022 AAAS Kavli gold award for science journalism.
About HHMI Tangled Bank Studios
HHMI Tangled Bank Studios is a mission-driven production company that seeks to shine a light on some of the most significant scientific challenges and breakthroughs of our time. Recent films include Blue Carbon, Every Little Thing, Wild Hope, Hunt for the Oldest DNA, Wilding, Blue Whales: Return of the Giants, and Oscar-nominated All That Breathes, the only film to win best documentary at both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals. Other notable films include Emmy Award-winners The Serengeti Rules and The Farthest – Voyager In Space; Emmy-nominated My Garden of a Thousand Bees, Battle to Beat Malaria, and Nature’s Fear Factor; and Peabody Award winner Inventing Tomorrow. The studio creates extensive educational and public outreach programs to extend the reach and impact of each film. For more information, please visit WWW.TANGLEDBANKSTUDIOS.ORG.
About Passion Pictures
Passion Pictures is a three-time Academy Award-winning independent production studio with a global reputation for impactful cinematic documentary features for theatrical release and single docs and series for the world’s biggest broadcaster and streaming platforms. PASSION has produced over 90 documentaries including One Day in September, Searching for Sugarman, Listen to Me Marlon and most recently: Caught Out, The Masked Scammer, Merkel, Skandal!, Anastasia, The Territory, Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story and The Rescue. PASSION’s Oscar and Bafta-winning work with partners including Netflix, National Geographic, Showtime and the BBC combines incredible access with dramatic and innovative storytelling and their most recent productions have been recognised at the highest level, selected at Sundance, Telluride, Tribeca and festivals worldwide.
Passion Planet, a Passion Pictures company, is led by five-time Emmy-Award-winning director, producer and Managing Director, David Allen, and Producer Gaby Bastyra. Passion Planet’s output ranges from authored single films, like the multi-award-winning My Life as A Turkey – described by The Times as “probably the best documentary of the year” – to feature documentaries like the Emmy-winning The Serengeti Rules, and ambitious landmark series like H2O: The Molecule That Made Us, and Earth: A New Wild. Their Emmy-nominated film My Garden of a Thousand Bees, produced during lockdown, was chosen to open the 40th season of NATURE on PBS, and won four Wildscreen Panda Awards, including the prestigious ‘Best of Festival’ Golden Panda. For more information, please visit WWW.PASSION-PICTURES.COM.