What’s Worth Saving

I grew up in Aotearoa, New Zealand, a small island country in the Pacific where our entire population is roughly the same as that of Los Angeles. My childhood was a world of lush green landscapes, jagged mountains, and beaches that stretch to the horizon. The air feels fresh and the rhythms of nature are uninterrupted by sprawling cities. Growing up, despite having a wild grandmother who at one time had a contract with MGM (a story for another day), Hollywood to me was distant as another planet, a shiny place of movie glamour and fame.

But here I am now, having lived all over the world, about to return to Los Angeles, a city that once seemed untouchable which is the setting for my new film, Every Little Thing. A place that is currently gripped by devastating wildfires. And the idea of survival is one everyone’s radar. Suddenly, it feels right to be writing about Los Angeles – and this film.

Every Little Thing tells the story of a woman, Terry Masear, who rescues injured hummingbirds amidst the glitter and glam of Hollywood. The hummingbird, with its delicate, jewel-like wings, is a fragile creature. And yet, in its smallest of gestures, it holds an immense power to transform — to heal, to inspire and to offer hope in the most unlikely of places.

Los Angeles is a city of contradictions: the romance of famous stars and palm trees set against the harsh realities of poverty and environmental destruction. There’s a mythology around this place, crafted by countless films like Chinatown, Mulholland Drive, La La Land and Blade Runner. These iconic films focus on the sprawling city’s urban chaos, its glitzy facades, its fractured soul. But few films show the city in the way I have come to see it – a place of resilience, of life thriving against the odds. In Every Little Thing, I wanted to reveal another layer of Los Angeles – one that’s as vibrant and beautiful as it is fragile. And in doing so, maybe it’s a story for us all.

As a director I gravitate toward stories that take something people think they know and ask them to think again. On the surface, it’s a strange fit. We don’t have hummingbirds in New Zealand; our most famous bird – the kiwi – is flightless. But hummingbirds, native to the Americas, are ubiquitous in California, and perhaps because I have outsider eyes, I was entranced by their shimmering magic, their fast flight, their color and diminutive size. I thought, this incredible creature could be a connector against a vast metropolis. I thought maybe this is a strategic advantage, seeing such a storied city like Los Angeles in a whole new way. A metaphoric, cinematic take on this extraordinary world we live in, using a city people think they know, with a creature that is right in people’s backyards, and delves into grand themes through the tiniest of heroes, the smallest birds in the world.

It became clear early in the making of Every Little Thing, which was inspired by Terry’s memoir of hummingbird rescue, that L.A.’s relationship with nature was key to the story. While Terry works tirelessly to save these delicate creatures, the city itself is undergoing its own battles against forces much larger than any one person or bird: not only climate change, habitat destruction and wildfires that have become an all-too-familiar part of life here, but also anonymity and loneliness and trauma. We forget kindness. And compassion.

The fires are a brutal reminder of how tenuous the balance is in life. And now so many of the habitats of the birds and people in Los Angeles hillsides are gone. Many flowering, nectaring plants that hummingbirds feed on, as well as their nesting spots, are devastated. But there is the chance for humanity to rally. To rebuild a city and, in doing so, our connections with the natural world.

In this film, I wanted to show that there’s something magical in the seemingly mundane. Terry, with her hummingbird hotline, is the unsung hero – like so many of us who quietly try to heal and repair what is broken, to salvage something from the wreckage. She embodies the hope that, despite the vastness of the challenges we face, there are small acts of greatness that have the power to ripple out and make a difference. In the hummingbirds, I saw a parallel: delicate, small, often overlooked, yet incredibly powerful.

In the stories of these hummingbirds – tiny survivors – we can also see all our vulnerabilities mirrored in the fragility of these birds. The hummingbird is a symbol of resilience, its wings beating so rapidly they blur into an almost supernatural force. But even these creatures that seem capable of defying the very laws of nature are not immune to the destructive forces around them. Just like Los Angeles, they too are caught in the dance between survival and loss.

Every Little Thing is a layered work; it’s an observational documentary, and also a stylised visual poem. In our film, we are both immersed in the familiar images of Los Angeles and, at the same time, through super slow (high speed) cinematography and score, we go to an otherworldly space. We enter the realm of the hummingbirds, where we bear witness to the miracle of healing.

I wanted to play with the idea of the film as a fable. And so I elected to use a stylistic grammar that showed the city as if from a bird in flight, with drone footage over the boulevards and pools, and people. It was a subtle nod to the literal bird’s eye view, as well as the movie-magic objectivity of seeing a city below us, unaware of the higher perceptions of its winged envoys who migrate into and out of the municipality every year.

The idea of capturing L.A. from a bird’s eye view came naturally to me. From the perspective of a small creature that sees the city from above, the world seems both familiar and strange. The vastness of L.A. is both intimidating and awe-inspiring. It’s a city that feels endless, sprawling into the horizon with its miles of freeways and neighborhoods, its hills and valleys, and yet, at times, it’s incredibly isolating. It’s easy to forget that amidst the glass towers and the smog, there’s life – there’s nature, there’s a beating heart. And that’s what I wanted to show.

The rhythmic movements of the hummingbirds, captured in ultra-high speed, became a metaphor for the city’s own frantic pace. The hummingbird is constantly in motion, always hovering, always searching, its tiny wings moving with astonishing speed. There’s a kind of beauty in that, but also a tension. It’s a reminder of the fragility of all life, the delicate balance we must maintain. L.A.’s sprawl is its own kind of wildness, just as unpredictable and powerful as the forces of nature that threaten it.

Los Angeles has long been a city where people come to reinvent themselves, to build something larger than life. But in the process, we’ve altered the landscape, pushed nature into the margins. The fires that burn in the hills, the displacement of animals, the loss of biodiversity – it all weighs on the film, not in a direct way, but in the subtext, in the quiet moments when Terry stands before a hummingbird, waiting for it to heal.

And then, in the final moments of the film, we return to the hills of Benedict Canyon, where the resilient hummingbirds take flight, restored and ready to face the world once more. It’s an image of hope – of what can be rebuilt, of the power of healing, and of the strength that exists in the smallest of creatures.

This is a film about compassion, about the power of small, unseen acts of care and kindness. It’s about looking at the world with new eyes and seeing the beauty and fragility in the everyday. In a world that often feels broken, we have to keep looking for the small wonders that remind us of what’s worth saving. And maybe, in doing so, we’ll find a way to restore not just the hummingbirds, but ourselves as well.