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Saving Luna

At the 7th Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival, the stories are as tiny as a tick and as big as a whale. Curiously, the tick tale is an expansive documentary, and the whale watcher is a relatively intimate bit of local color.

The title character of “Saving Luna” is a young killer whale. Separated from his Orca family, Luna adopts all comers in the waters of Vancouver Island, Canada. Luna has faith in human beings. He doesn’t have faith that they would understand him. He has faith that they need him in their way as much as he needs them in his way.

Michael Parfit, the narrator of “Saving Luna” has the kind of soothing voice that fits perfectly between storytelling objectivity and cultivated sentimentality.The film works so well because the story and personality of Luna fit no neat issue-picture pigeonhole and because it accommodates mankind’s unevolved spirit.

This philosophical nugget about the supposed wall between the wild animal kingdom and people draws profound little markings on the canvas of the urgent, dire horizons that surround us.