The Weedfish
2021 · 9m · New Zealand
Directed by Matt Silcock, Aart van Dijk
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Two marine researchers and photographers explore New Zealand's disappearing kelp forests to find and photograph the elusive Crested Weedfish.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a nature doc that refuses to be a nature doc—two photographers chasing a fish that may not even exist anymore, which is either the most boring premise ever or a perfect metaphor for grief dressed up as science, and honestly I'm still not sure which.
The restraint here is the whole thing: a measured essay film that knows exactly how to position itself within the lineage of cinema verité and environmental elegy, letting the formal rigor of the cinematography and the editing rhythm do the philosophical work without announcing it.
The decision to make the weedfish itself almost incidental—to let the *search* and the *footage* of disappearing kelp become the actual subject—is what transforms this from educational content into something that feels genuinely urgent and singular.