A Song of Resilience: ‘The Last Whale Singer’ Director Reza Memari Takes Us on a Deep Dive into the New Animated Feature

Over 15 years ago, German-Iranian filmmaker Reza Memari was watching a documentary about humpback whales and discovered that the giant mammals have actual singers in their tribe. “It’s still unclear why they sing and what the songs mean, but I was absolutely fascinated,” says the writer-director of the new animated feature The Last Whale Singer. “Right away, an image came into my mind of a humpback who doesn’t have a song. There’s something universally relatable about finding your voice in a world that sometimes makes it difficult to be heard.”

That’s how the journey of The Last Whale Singer began. Produced by Telescope Animation, the movie will be released in Germany in February of next year. “At that time, I was still making Richard the Stork (U.S. title: A Stork’s Journey), which is about a tiny orphaned sparrow who is raised by a stork family and believes he’s a stork too. The idea of exploring a gigantic animal with…