Some things seem to transcend reality despite living within it; they feel extraterrestrial, metaphysical, or simply fantastical. Call it the Kantian noumenon (or don’t, your call). Hummingbirds are undoubtedly among these. Their wings beat 50 times per second on average (and up to 80 beats per second), using a complicated figure-eight motion that creates wake vortices beneath each wing. Like delightful little drones, they can hover almost perfectly still and move in any direction. The way they fly is more efficient than helicopters. They’re so fast that you might not realize how remarkable and downright dream-like they are, but you’ll be converted once you see them slowed down in the new film,Every Little Thing.
Sally Aitken’s documentary is beautiful, relaxing, and subtly poignant as it follows a “hummingbird rehabilitator” named Terry Masear.Working in Los Angelesfor most of her avian career, Masear helps people when they discover injured or abandoned hummingbirds, and tries to nurse them back to health if they’re in bad shape. 90% of the time, she fields phone calls and is able to guide kind citizens to help the birds they find, butEvery Little Thingexplores that other 10% of the time, with Masear working with the birds (each with a name and story) to heal their trauma and get them back into nature. Meanwhile, the physician heals herself in the process. It’s a soothing and special film.
Director Sally Aitken and the film’s hummingbird cinematographer, Ann Johnson Prum, will hold a Q&A with the film at the IFC Center in New York at 6:30p.m. on Jan. 9 and Jan. 10.Find information here.
Bird Physician, Heal Thyself
Every Little Thing
Author and wildlife rehabber Terry Masear has an ambitious goal: to save every injured hummingbird in Los Angeles. But the path to survival is fraught with danger. This heart-expanding Sundance hit introduces audiences to Terry’s diminutive patients through breathtaking slow-motion photography and emotional storytelling. Over the course of director Sally Aitken’s moving documentary, we become deeply invested in baby hummingbirds like Cactus and Wasabi, celebrating their tiny victories and lamenting their tragedies. Through Terry’s eyes, each bird becomes memorable, mighty and heroic. Her compassion and empathy serves as a reminder that grace can be found in the smallest of acts and the tiniest of creatures.
Every Little Thinghas a loose structure without melodrama and emotional manipulation, convincing us to simply relax, observe, and be delighted by unexpected moments of meaning. The film is partially a character study of Terry Masear, whose acclaimed book about her work,Fastest Things on Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood, inspired the film. Masear has had one of those long and interesting lives that beg for dramatizations, but the film is wisely elliptical with her story.
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We get some archival footage of Masear, home videos and the like, and she explains her life in sparse, vague ways. She was badly abused as a child, and her mother had many demons, but we don’t find out much more about that. She was a wild child after she left home and gained an expanded connection to nature after dropping acid, but we never get into the details. She falls in love with an older man named Frank and opens up to him in a way that heals her and helps her grow, but we never even learn his last name. We know that he passed away, and that she lives alone but is not lonely.
This vagueness helps create a universality to the film, preventing it from simply being about Masear. It’s just enough detail to brilliantly connect with the work that she does for the hummingbirds. They come to her damaged in a variety of ways, and she devotes time and care to each of them, giving them the kindness and attention they need to hopefully recover. In a way, she is recreating the story of her life with each hummingbird, recognizing their quiet trauma and hoping to heal it. It all amounts to a beautiful yet subtle message without being sappy or silly.
The Winning Personalities of Hummingbirds
Masear is fascinating to watch and listen to, but it’s difficult to compete with the hummingbirds themselves; they’re phenomenal co-stars, and the intimate scenes in which Masear bathes them, talks to them, or tries to get them to fly are the best parts ofEvery Little Thing. We’re introduced to a small group of hummingbirds who are being rehabilitated at the same time. There’s Cactus, who flew into the eponymous plant and injured his wing. There’s Sugar Baby, who was covered in sugar water, which has begun to dissolve and make holes in his wings. There’s Jimmy, the Sidney Twins, Wasabi, and some others.
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Cinematographers Nathan Barlow and Dan Freene film these sweet scenes in the house without much fuss; they and Aitken know that the birds are more interesting than any flashy aesthetic. It’s incredible to see the personality differences between each bird, beyond the usual anthropomorphism viewers apply to animals. Each bird has different traumas and is in a different stage of rehab as well, but there is something like a spirit to each of them, whether in the wings or eyes, that feels personal and distinct.
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Ann Johnson Prum, the third cinematographer ofEvery Little Thing, was responsible for the slow-motion, close-up photography of the hummingbirds. These mesmerizing moments are interspersed throughout, either as Masear speaks in voiceover or Caitlin Yeo’s whimsical and touching score fills the air. This is when the true transcendence of the tiny creatures becomes most apparent (there’s Kant’s noumena again).
With a perfect cocktail of the right lenses, frame rates, and sensors, Prum and her Phantom camera create utter magic in these small scenes. The birds practically look like CGI (they are absolutely not CGI, just to iterate), but even more fantastical than any Disney animator could imagine. Watching these moments, you absolutely connect with Masear in her fascination with and love for the hummingbirds.
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Every Little Thingis a little too light and relaxing for its own good, feeling somewhat insubstantial by the end, but it seems to accomplish exactly what it set out and certainly satisfied a particular niche. It’s both very human and very magical, a look at Aves and a woman filtered through compassion and kindness. In a Flaherty way, the film is a little sneaky in how it presents itself (the “rehabilitation center” was actually a rented house for the production, and Masear was living in Portland when the production began), but these things don’t take away from the ultimate result — a beautiful, healing movie about the wounded and the healers.
From Kino Lorber,Every Little Thinghits theaters on Jun 02, 2025. you may find moreinformation, theaters, and showtimes here.Every Little Thingis directed by Sally Aitken and produced by Bettina Dalton, p.g.a. for WildBear Entertainment, with Anna Godas and Oli Harbottle. The film is executive produced by David Guy Elisco, Sean B. Carroll, Alan Erson, and Michael Tear.
