What If Your Parrot Could Tell You How It Feels?
- FHFF
- 8 hours ago
- 4 min read
FHFF Best of the Fest | Friday, July 17 at 7 PM • San Juan Island Library & Lopez Island Library
What does it mean to truly communicate? It's a question we rarely pause to ask — and one that Parrot Kindergarten, the 2025 FHFF Audience Choice Winner for Best “Things to Consider” Feature Film, answers in ways that are by turns surprising, moving, and quietly revolutionary.
The film screens free of charge on Friday, July 17 at 7 PM, simultaneously at the San Juan Island Library in Friday Harbor and the Lopez Island Library. Director Amy Herdy will be in attendance in person at the San Juan Island Library for a live Q&A following the screening. Lopez Island audience members can participate in that same conversation via Google Meet.
A Woman, a Cockatoo, and a Question Science Couldn’t Ignore
Jennifer Taylor O’Connor is a lawyer, an animal cognition researcher, and, by her own description, a bird mom. When she adopted Ellie — a Goffin’s cockatoo with a fierce mind and seemingly boundless energy — she quickly discovered that the only thing that calmed Ellie’s restlessness was learning. So Jennifer did what few would have thought to try: she taught her parrot to read.
What began with foam letters from Walmart and a handful of flashcards evolved, over years of patient work, into something far more extraordinary. Ellie learned to navigate a custom speech board, build a vocabulary of around 300 words, draw, play tablet games, and — in one of the film’s most delightful moments — independently figure out how to make video calls on her own.
A multi-university research team analyzed nearly 100,000 data points from Ellie’s interactions. Her body corroboration rate came in at 92%. Seventy-three percent of her nearly 5,000 logged words expressed a desire for connection: to play, to be together, to engage. It marked a milestone: for the first time, the research supported the conclusion that Ellie is genuinely communicating. The science, as one researcher in the film puts it, is not about absolute truth. It’s about evidence. And the evidence, in this case, is remarkable.
Parrot Kindergarten: Two Voices, One Journey
But Parrot Kindergarten is not only a science film. It’s a deeply personal story about what it means to lose your voice — and find it again.
At 14, Jennifer was enrolled by her family in the Institute in Basic Life Principles, a program run by Bill Gothard that she would later understand to be a cult. The experience left her silenced and disempowered. Years later, watching Ellie strain to express herself — and recognizing in that frustration something painfully familiar — Jennifer channeled everything she had into giving her bird a voice. In doing so, she reclaimed her own.
The parallel is one the film handles with care and honesty. “All I could think,” Jennifer says at one point, “was I wished I knew her words, and how awful it must be to have so much inside that you can’t express.” It’s a line that lands on multiple levels.
About the Director
Amy Herdy is no stranger to stories that demand to be told. Her career as an award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker has produced a body of work that has directly impacted American politics and culture.
Her investigative series “Betrayal in the Ranks,” co-authored at The Denver Post in 2003, was a top-ten Pulitzer finalist in 2004 and spurred Congressional reforms in how the military handles sexual assault. She went on to contribute to the Oscar-nominated, Peabody Award-winning documentary The Invisible War as an expert subject and researcher; produce The Hunting Ground (CNN) and The Bleeding Edge (2018), which won both a DuPont Award and a George Polk Award; and co-create Allen v. Farrow, the four-part HBO series nominated for seven Emmy Awards. Her films Britney v. Spears and Harry & Meghan both aired on Netflix.
Parrot Kindergarten is Herdy’s directorial debut — a departure in subject matter, but not in purpose. She told The Hollywood Reporter, “I’m drawn to people who have undergone trauma. I think pain cracks us open and creates depth. I feel it’s incredibly important to give voice to people who might not otherwise have a voice and might not otherwise have a chance to have their story heard. That’s what I lean toward.”
That instinct drew her to Jennifer and Ellie’s story — and then kept her there for reasons that went beyond science. In her Director’s Statement, Herdy writes:
“The astounding science of the previously unacknowledged sentience of animals we show in this film is what initially drew me to this project, but what I love most about it is the underlying theme of how true connection with another being can bring healing and ultimately, joy.” – Amy Herdy
Of watching Jennifer and Ellie together, she told The Hollywood Reporter: “Watching Jen and Ellie together was like witnessing a quiet revolution. They have such a bond of empathy and trust and mutual respect, and they understand each other’s hearts and minds.”
Herdy lives with a variety of animals on a farm on an island off the coast of Washington state.
Join Us — Free Admission, July 17
Parrot Kindergarten screens as part of the FHFF 2026 Best of the Fest series — free monthly documentary screenings running January through September. No tickets required.
📍 San Juan Island Library (Friday Harbor)
Friday, July 17 • 7 PM • Followed by a live Q&A with Director Amy Herdy (in person)
Friday, July 17 • 7 PM • Live Q&A with Director Amy Herdy via Google Meet
Screening sponsored by The Toy Box.
Learn more and explore the Best of the Fest film guide at fhff.org.
2026 Best of the Fest series presented by Cascade PBS and The Journal of the San Juan Islands.
