”Haulout” with Evgenia Arbugaeva

A man, alone, on a desolate beach.  Armed and mumbling into a recording device in a soundscape of wind and waves. As director Evgenia Arbugaeva (co-director, her brother Maxim Arbugaev) tells Mike, the initial images of the Oscar-nominated short “Haulout” deliberately create solitude and quiet before the sudden arrival of nearly 100,000 stressed-out walruses:  with Arctic ice no longer ensured, they must pile themselves tusk-to-tusk on the beach between feeding sessions.  The film tracks the interactions-at-a-distance between the scientist Max Chakilev and these enormous mammals. But on a deeper level, it portrays a world undergoing tremendous change, one for which none of us are fully prepared.   "Haulout" can be seen on The New Yorker website.     Follow: @topdocspod on Instagram and twitter   The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix.