Winged Migration (2001) on Netflix
G20011h 29mDocumentary
Migratory birds leave their winter grounds each spring and cross continents and oceans to reach their summer homes, navigating by the stars. Geese, storks, cranes and swans make the journey.
- Netflix4.4/5
- IMDb7.9/1012,728 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes95%
Trailer
Plot summary
The film follows migratory birds over three years of filming on all seven continents. Each spring the birds fly north to their summer homes and each autumn they return toward the equator, covering hundreds or thousands of miles and finding their way by the stars. The arctic tern travels from pole to pole. Over open ocean there is little to land on, so a bird must keep flying until it finds a ship or reaches shore. Some birds do not survive the journey because of predators, illness or injury. The flocks travel as a community.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Winged Migration (2001)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- To make the 89-minute film, the filmmakers exposed over 950 km of film; in one case, two months of shooting at a single location was edited down to less than a minute of screen time.
- The filmmakers raised storks, pelicans and other birds from birth so they would imprint on staff members and fly alongside the camera crews, and kept the birds used to film equipment; several of these species had never been imprinted before.
- Most of the aerial footage was shot from ultralights, paragliders and hot air balloons, with extra material captured from trucks, motorcycles, motorboats, remote-controlled robots and a French Navy warship.
- The film states that no special effects were used in the filming of the birds, but some segments showing Earth from outer space, with animated birds, are entirely CGI and are cut into the real footage.
- The soundtrack by Bruno Coulais was recorded by the Bulgarian group Bulgarka Junior Quartet, Nick Cave in English and Robert Wyatt, and includes panting superimposed on wingbeats so the viewer feels alongside a bird.
