Yesterday (March 7th, 2022), ILY Films reveals that their 2021 cinematic release, The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52, will be available on digital download and DVD this April (April, 2022). 

Leonardo DiCaprio, one of Hollywood’s best-know actors who has starred in movies such as Titanic (1997), Catch Me If You Can (2002), and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), donated $50,000 to the project’s Kickstarter fund. 

The Loneliest Whale was written by Lisa Schiller (Four Feet, Undefeatable) and Joshua Zeman (The Sons of Sam, Cropsey, Mysterious Skin), who also directed and produced the film, alongside fellow producer Jonathan Shukat (Let Her Speak, Other People's Love Letters). 

The search is on / Picture Credit: ILY Films
The search is on / Picture Credit: ILY Films

The documentary has a vast and interesting team of research scientists and academics behind it, which includes Anna Sirovic, Associate Professor at Texas A&M University at Galveston, musician and philosopher David Rothenberg (Why Birds Sing, Bug Music, Thousand Mile Song) and Joseph George, who is the retired Chief U.S. Navy of Integrated Undersea Surveillance System. 

The U.S. Navy, in the year of 1989, discovered an unusual signal within the Pacific Ocean; this sound, which was picked up by a clandestine top-secret Cold War-era surveillance system, vibrated through the deep of the sea at 52 hertz. 

The noise belonged to a whale, a creature now known as the loneliest whale on the planet due to his unusual calling frequency. 

Can he be found? / Picture Credit: ILY Films
Can he be found? / Picture Credit: ILY Films

The Loneliest Whale shows how the mammal is tracked, and how the search is done. Scientists believe the poor whale has spent its whole life alone, calling out at a frequency that differs from other whales, meaning none of his kind can hear him. 

As the team seek out the solitary beast, they will also take a look at how humans have reacted to the whale’s plight, while highlighting its connection to the ever-increasing loneliness in our globalised world. 

If this unfortunate creature is still out there? If so, is it even possible to find him? 

The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52 releases on digital download on April 4th, 2022, and on DVD on April 11th, 2022. 

Written by Melissa, who you can follow on Twitter @melissajournal

MORE: National Geographic green-lights third season of docuseries Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller


Tagged in