If you love animals and have always dreamed of saving some furry creature, this film is for you.  If you Isaiah Saxon’s feature film debut is an appealing tale, enhanced by puppetry, some CGI and careful world building.

It probably helps to know that I have a room full of puppets and we took two puppets (Plato the badger and Tomoe the ring-tailed lemur) with us to the screening. From what I understand, the Ochi are based on the Golden snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus roxellana)  which are native to the temperate mountain forest of central and southwest China. That’s easy to see with their blue faces. But the Ochi was also based on the Tarsiers, the lone extant family of the infraorder Tarsiiformes, which are found in the Philippines, Borneo and Sumatra.

Although from the trailer, I thought the Ochi resembled lemurs, Tarsiers are more closely related to simians than lemurs. You might think the baby Ochi looks suspiciously like Yoda or Grogu, but we’re not in that universe.

The Cinematic Baggage 

“The Legend of Ochi” is set in a small village on the island in the Black Sea called Carpathia. For reference, the Black Sea is bordered by Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine. The name “Carpathia” might be familiar to you for several reasons. The Carpathian Mountains is a mountain range that crosses Central Europe and Southeast Europe and is part of Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Romania and Serbia. The historic region of Carpathian Ruthenia or Transcarpathia is an ethically diverse area that has been part of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine and Russia.

For old movie fans, Carpathia is a fictional European kingdom from where the Prince Regent Charles (Laurence Olivier), a widower, is from in the 1957 “The Prince and the Showgirl.”  In that film, this titular prince meets a showgirl named Elsie (Marilyn Monroe) while in London to see George V crowned king (22 June 1911). In the 1989 “Ghostbusters II,” the ghost Vigo the Carpathian–Prince Vigo von Homburg Deutschendorf (Wilhelm von Homburg) describes himself as the “scourge of Carpathia” and “the sorrow of Moldavia.” His subjects called him Vigo the Torturer.

For people intrigued by the Titanic tragedy, the RMS Carpathia was the steamship that rescue survivors from the RMS Titanic on 15 April 1912.

The Legend of Ochi

In “The Legend of Ochi,” Carpathia is an isolated island that struggles to keep up with modern times. They have cars, but they are boxy and rundown. People drive while others ride horses. There is a supermarket with refrigerators filled with eggs and jugs of mild as well as well packaged junk food but the children walk on barely paved or unpaved dirt roads where small pigs roam. This is semi-rural hopelessness where the forest and mountains still hold mysteries and fearsome creatures. There are bears, but what the villagers fear the most is the Ochi. There’s a curfew in place to keep people safe.

Willem Dafoe plays another misguided father, Maxim. He drives around at night with a strange radar system and a ragtag company of boys headed by his only son, Petro (Finn Wolfhard). Armed with guns, they go to kill the Ochi. Now Yuri (Helena Zengel) has joined, the only girl in the band. On this particular night, a baby Ochi is separated from its mother. The Ochi scatter. The adult Ochi are less cute and easily bare their teeth. Think of gorillas with blue faces caught in thick forests. Yet the Ochi can skip over the tree tops not unlike the warriors of Wuxi films.

Returning home, Petro and Yuri share a meal with their dour father. Their mother, Dasha (Emily Watson),  left them, or did she? Dasha lives a solitary life in a cabin upon the snow-clad mountains. Her own vehicle has a dashboard comically strewn with trash.

Yuri is sent out to check the traps when she find that one has moved and the baby Ochi has been caught in it, with one of its hind legs injured. Freeing the creature, she slowly earns its trust, bringing it home, but soon deciding to try an re-unite it with its mother. The chase is on, with her father, brother and the band of boys in pursuit of Yuri as she first finds her mother and then searches for the Ochi mother.  During this time, she learns that she can understand and speak the Ochi language.

Of course, this is heading for a happy ending.

This film has no villain except, perhaps, ignorance. Zengel carries the film firmly as the plucky girl who is determined to find her own way in life. Watson’s Dasha is an observational scientist held prisoner by the island’s superstitions. Scenes were shot in Transylvania, Romania, using the Apuseni Mountains (Western Romanian Carpathian), the glacier lake Bâlea Lake, Transfăgărășan road in the southern section of the Carpathian Mountains and the Castel Film Studios.

As director and writer, Isaiah Saxon has created a quirky world on the edge of modernity dominated by thick forests and the forbidding mountains. Saxon’s tale is a lesson in love and understanding. It’s a tale with charm and love where children help heal misguided adults in an imperfect world that is both foreign and familiar.

“The Legend of Ochi” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 26 January 2024. Originally scheduled for release on 28 February 2025, the release was delayed due to the Los Angeles Fires (Eaton) during which Saxon lost his home. The film was given a limited release on 18 April 2025 and then a wider release on 25 April 2025.