Tragic whale tale goes to Cannes

Canwest News Service

Saturday, May 10, 2008

CREDIT: Canwest News Service
Saving Luna is one of 10 feature films picked by Telefilm Canada for screening at the Cannes Marche de Film later this month.

Vancouver Island's homegrown whale tale is headed to Cannes.

Saving Luna, a film about the life and death of the young killer whale who became separated from his pod and took up residence in Nootka Sound off the Island's rugged west coast, is one of 10 feature films picked by Telefilm Canada for screening at the Cannes Marche de Film later this month.

The Marche runs in conjunction with the famed Cannes Film Festival, with its glitz, glamour and Hollywood blockbusters, but is geared to marketing films for theatre screenings, said producer Suzanne Chisholm.

She and partner Mike Parfit wrote and edited the film.

"We never expected, when we were in Gold River four years ago, that it would go this far," Chisholm said.

The film -- which explores the complicated relationship between Luna, the people who tried to befriend him and organizations which tried to stop the interaction -- has already won awards at film festivals from Bermuda to San Francisco.

"From the very beginning we said it was a world-class story," Chisholm said.

Luna turned up in Nootka Sound as a calf in 2001 and tried to compensate for the loss of his pod by connecting with people and boats. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans made an ill-fated attempt to reuinite him with his pod, but the Mowachaht-Muchalaht First Nation, who believed Luna embodied the spirit of their dead chief, lured the whale away from the net pen with canoes.

Luna was killed by a tugboat propeller in 2006.

© Harbour City Star 2008

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