Beautiful, interesting, incredible cinema.

Synopsis

Isabella Rossellini visits Argentinian Patagonia to witness the beachside mating rituals of elephant seals. Along with biologist Claudio Campagna, Rossellini discovers that size really does matter in the hierarchy of elephant seals.

Our take

In this startling short, Rossellini goes from playing with paper cutouts of elephant seals to coming face-to-face with the real thing—it’s as though she needs to see them for herself to believe that they exist. By turns domineering and gentle, these beasts seem to be crawling contradictions.