“A long, long time ago, Great Mother taught her children: do not harm, do not take, share what you have.” But Man forgot.
The Northern Residents is a love story between Paul Spong and Helena Symonds, and the orcas who shaped their life. For more than fifty years, the couple has lived on a remote island in British Columbia, listening to the Northern Resident orcas and building a partnership defined by devotion, curiosity, and a shared calling to protect them. As Paul nears ninety and the flute that once echoed across the bay falls silent, the film returns to the defining moment when Paul, paddling alone into fog in 1971, playing his flute into the unknown, was answered by a pod that stayed. Today, that call reverberates through Helena’s groundbreaking acoustic research, through his great-granddaughter’s voice carried across the same waters, and through the couple’s urgent, united mission to return Corky to her family after more than fifty years in captivity.
Set against rising ecological noise and fragility, The Northern Residents becomes a meditation on partnership, purpose, and care, an ode to two people whose love for each other is inseparable from their fight to preserve the creatures they've spent a lifetime listening to.
This film is currently in post production.
