It was March 3 2021, and Billy Mail was standing on the pontoon at his house in Shetland, gazing over the serene water as the late winter sunlight glistened in the ripples.
When a young otter scrambled on to the deck beside him, crunching on a crab, Billy was surprised because otters usually keep their distance.
Immediately noticing how thin she was, Billy worried she wasn’t going to survive and began to feed her.
In the days afterwards, the otter returned again and again, and a bond formed between the pair, so much so that he gave her a name.
“Molly was desperate, starving, and she was probably going to die,” Billy said. “She was eating crabs, which is a bad sign, because it takes more energy to catch them than they get out of them.
“Her bones were hanging out, her flesh falling off. When animals are desperate, they seem to know humans can help them.
“Otters are not given to be friendly towards humans, but she made that connection, and she didn’t really have any fear, and that lack of fear turned to curiosity.
“She took a step towards us, and we took a step towards her, and the rest is history.”
‘She was a wee breath of fresh air’
While Billy was helping Molly, what Molly wasn’t to know was how much she was helping him, too. Life had been hard, hectic, in the time before Molly turned up at Billy’s feet.
His parents had passed away, Covid was ongoing, and the building work he and wife Susan were doing on their home was bogged down in the usual headaches of planners, architects and builders.
“Our life was consumed by all of that, so she was a wee breath of fresh air. I’d called the local wildlife sanctuary, which specialises in nursing otters and seals back to health. They gave me the nod with regards to feeding her.”
When renowned wildlife filmmaker Charlie Hamilton James, who started his career at just 16 on David Attenborough’s BBC series Trials Of Life, heard about the connection developing between Billy and Molly, he journeyed north to see it for himself.
“I went to Shetland on my own at 19, just to photograph otters,” Charlie said.
“I have friends there and one of them was helping Billy and Susan with their house, and he sent me pictures of Billy with the otter, so I came up to see it.”
Charlie then asked Billy if he fancied making a film.
An Otter Love Story
The result is Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story, a feature-length documentary which received its world premiere – with Billy and Susan in attendance – at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas.
It has since become a hit on the US version of Disney+ and will be streamed in the UK in November.
But first it receives its Scottish premiere at the LandxSea Film Festival in Montrose this month – where a second screening has been added after the first sold out.
As filming commenced on the documentary, the bond between Billy and Charlie grew just like the relationship between Billy and Molly, transforming the film into something much deeper than a wildlife documentary.
Charlie said: “People think it’ll be a story about a bloke and an otter, but it’s about love, childlessness, overcoming – it has a lot of emotional layering in it that took a while, that trust between me and Billy as we became closer friends.
“If you’re putting your whole life into my hands to tell your story, it’s a precarious thing and takes a lot of trust. It was lovely of him to open up about things he had held tight.”
Invited into Billy and Susan’s home, Charlie knew the most important part of the process was time in the field in order to catch those serendipitous moments.
One such instance came at daybreak as Billy rowed out to sea with Molly following him, as he encouraged the now healthy otter to break the ties they had developed.
“Out of all the things I’ve ever shot, that moment is the pinnacle,” Charlie said.
‘It was so insanely beautiful’
“The dawn light and the otter swimming, it was so insanely beautiful. My hands were shaking as I tried to control the drone.
“For someone who spends all my life working with emotion and aesthetics, that was the lucky pinnacle of it all and I’m glad I didn’t screw it up.
“Susan doesn’t cry but when we were watching the premiere I looked over to her at that moment and saw tears. I thought, ‘Gotcha!’”
A touching watch
Prior to that scene, the film captures Billy’s devotion to Molly, as he puts out a bath for her, makes a ball pit for her to play in, buys a second freezer to store her fish, and even builds a mini replica of his and Susan’s house for the otter to take shelter in during the particularly rough winter nights.
A camera set up inside later captures Molly rearing her cub in there.
Adding to the personal nature of the film, Charlie asked Billy and Susan to be its narrators.
“Susan’s voiceover is so important because it lends an emotional depth,” the filmmaker said.
Seeing how touched audiences are when they watch the film is mission complete, as far as Charlie is concerned.
“It was really important when we set out to make this movie that nothing bad happened in it and everything was nice, because we live in a world that’s awful at the moment.”
And as for Molly? Well, she’s all grown up and living independently, but she still drops by to see her pal from time to time.
“She remembers us,” Billy said.
“She always was and still is a wild otter, that’s the beauty of this. But if she needs a bed on a stormy night or a piece of fish in the winter, she’ll pop past. And it’s nice to see her when she does.”
Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story, LandxSea Film Festival, Montrose Playhouse, September 13-15.
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