10 documentaries that made us fall in love with nature

Still from 'Night on Earth'. The documentary is on Netflix.

Our planet is so stunningly beautiful, you can watch its beauty unfold for hours in Moving Art - especially now that we’ve been homebound for more than a year. There are four seasons of this documentary series on Netflix, and it still has not explored many a nook of our beautiful planet.

Like most of you, I grew up watching the Carl Sagan show Pale Blue Dot - it helped us to appreciate our planet and, as the nuns at school never stopped reiterating, our insignificance compared to what’s going on in the universe.

But there are some of us who will not be deterred by the steepest mountains, or the deepest oceans, the most daunting deserts and even the most challenging weather, and thankfully they document their journeys on film. All for the rest of us who want to discover worlds from our couch. For us, thankfully there are these:

1. Free Solo

I have had the privilege of watching this documentary on the big screen and I came away feeling humbled, not just by nature, but by the indefatigable spirit of man. How easily we give up our daily challenges while other manage to scale the insurmountable.

Alexander Honnold's ascent of El Capitan - without ropes and safety equipment - is captured beautifully in the film by directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (the mountaineer who also made Meru).

Free Solo is on Disney + Hotstar

2. Nanook of the North

Documentaries, though, weren't always stunningly beautiful truthtellers. We watched Nanook of The North (considered to be the first documentary ever) in middle school, awed by how the Inuits lived in igloos, made them by carving out giant chunks of ice, and even hunt seals. For days afterwards we ate food packed in our lunch boxes like they ate the seal meat after the hunt.

Only after we grew up did I learn that Nanook’s hunt was staged for the film crew (the kill, the struggle against the seal was real, but it was orchestrated), and that the women who were shown to be his wives weren’t really his wives but other Inuit villagers.

Nothing takes away the credit of the filmmaker-writer Robert Flaherty who captured the tough life on ice (with a weird subtitle calling the life ‘happy-go-lucky’). The gentle scenes of Nanook’s family life with his wives and children gave us a glimpse of a life most of us will never ever get to see.

Nanook of the North is on YouTube

3. The Last Maasai

I felt like an intruder watching The Last Maasai as well. They are giant warriors of the African Savannah, and when you attend their dance show at your hotel at Masai Mara and you buy their beautifully woven red cloth, it makes you wonder if we are responsible for these tribes slowly losing their way of life by introducing them to our way of life.

Speaking of Masai Mara, one can never really understand how vast our planet is, or even think about visualising it, until they have seen the African Savannah with their own eyes. And no matter how many documentaries there are to watch, there’s always some other corner of the world to explore.

The Last Maasai is on Amazon Prime Video

4. Night on Earth

The most incredible series over the last couple of years, though, is the result of tireless work by documentary filmmakers, and it is called: Night on Earth. And I can’t stop raving about how different our world looks when the sun has set. How predatory animals can also go hungry and how small size does not mean cute and cuddly…

Night on Earth is on Netflix.

5. Virunga

Documenting nature is as tough as can be, you must have read accounts of filmmakers who spend hours and years waiting to capture that perfect shot, that awesome, rewarding video. It is not a hobby, it is a life choice. And sometimes when nature’s fury ruins your equipment and precious footage, the heartache is real too.

Funding is another challenge filmmakers and researchers face. After all, who will fund a film and research that studies the life of cocaine-addicted frogs? Keeping the bizarre subjects aside, you are glad there are people like David Attenborough who have spent a lifetime exploring the creatures of our planet and sharing their findings with us.

That’s why I will forever treasure the scariest trip of my life: a trip to see the mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park. We had to hand over our passports to the local militia who escorted us (my first time seeing a machine gun in real life) to the mountains (machetes for hacking the undergrowth). The dense jungle reeks of the gorillas, and when you’re panting from the effort, you want to upchuck everything you had for breakfast.

Watching the gorillas was a sight I shall never forget. And don’t let the seven letter name fool you. A year-old female gorilla who suddenly jumped on the nearest bamboo like plants was as big as a Maruti 800, and when she peed, it was like a small waterfall… My ultimate moment of happiness wasn't seeing the giant silverback gorilla (the head of that pack) taking his time to pose for our pictures, but from exchanging my mountain walking shoes (I had stepped in Gorilla do-doo) with blue Bata flip flops a village kid was wearing.

6-9 Dancing With The Birds | Magical Andes | Seaspiracy | Chasing Coral

I wonder if we can rightfully put documentary filmmakers on a par with the journalists covering war. How do you cover events that are life-changing without crossing that invisible line of reporting?

Yes, there are documentaries like Dancing With The Birds (narrated by Stephen Fry) and Magical Andes that fill you with joy and hope for our planet. But there are also tales of Seaspiracy and Chasing Coral that will give you sleepless nights about the rapidly changing face of our planet.

These films are on Netflix.

10. My Octopus Teacher

This year when My Octopus Teacher won the Oscar, there was a celebration everywhere. After all, it put the world’s attention on a copper-blooded creature with nine brains and amazing camouflage techniques. It showed how there could be empathy between man and cephalopod. I watched this one-and-a-half hour documentary, sniffling into tissues as the trust between octopus and diver developed and the diver began to learn life lessons about having fun with shoals of fish as well as the need to live quietly among the sharks.

I knew I was being manipulated by my compassion, but should the filmmakers stop being objective and save the octopus from being eaten? On this World Environment Day, I hope that we evolve from empathy and learn to show compassion to all creatures and safeguard our one and only home planet.

My Octopus Teacher is on Netflix.