HIFF Screens 'The Cove' at Guild Hall on June 25

As part of their ongoing 25 Years: 25 Films series of screenings, The Hamptons International Film Festival is presenting 2009 festival film and 2010 Academy Award-winner for Best Documentary, The Cove, at Guild Hall this Sunday, June 25 at 7 p.m.

The Cove chronicles the journey of Ocean Preservation Society leader—and the film’s director—Louie Psihoyos and Richard O’Barry, an internationally recognized authority on dolphin training, as they investigate and eventually uncover the truth about the brutal killing and capture of wild dolphin in Taiji, Japan. Psihoyos and O’Barry, who trained dolphins for the 1960s TV show Flipper, bring an elite team of activists, filmmakers and freedivers on this covert mission to penetrate the remote and hidden cove in Taiji, shining a light on a terrible secret. Utilizing state-of-the-art techniques and equipment, such as hidden microphones and cameras in fake rocks, the team reveals this small seaside village as a microcosm of horrific ecological crimes happening worldwide. The film was produced by Fisher Stevens and Paula DuPré Pesmen, and written by Mark Monroe.

Watch the trailer below.

Throughout their investigation, documented in the film, Psihoyos and his team risk life and limb, and find themselves discovering facts about ecological crimes all over the world.

When documentary premiered in 2009, The New York Times wrote, “The Cove is much more than just a record of that adventure. Like the director’s cover story, the movie is a Trojan horse: an exceptionally well-made documentary that unfolds like a spy thriller, complete with bugged hotel rooms, clandestine derring-do and mysterious men in gray flannel suits.”

Proceeds for Sunday’s screening will go to support HIFF’s Compassion, Justice and Animal Rights program and HIFF’s education initiatives, which provide young filmmakers the means to start their career early through summer camps and year round production training and activities.

This screening is part of the 25 Years: 25 Films series to celebrate The Hamptons Insternational Film Festival’s 25th anniversary. HIFF films from 1993 to 2016 are being shown almost weekly, since February, in venues across the Hamptons, as well as some outside New York. The series concludes with the 25th Annual Hamptons Film Film Festival taking place over Columbus Day weekend, October 5–9.

The next installment of 25 Years: 25 Films is an outdoor screening of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire at the Southampton Arts Center on Friday, July 14 at 8:30 p.m.

Tickets to The Cove are $15 for the public, $10 for members and can be purchased here.

To learn more about the 25 Years: 25 Films Screening Series, visit the HIFF website here.

Learn more at hamptonsfilmfest.org.