Parrot Kindergarten screening free on July 17 on San Juan, Lopez

||| FROM ELLEN ROBERTS & KAREN PALMER for FRIDAY HARBOR FILM FESTIVAL |||

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 at the Friday Harbor Film Festival, answers in ways that are by turns surprising, moving, and quietly revolutionary.

This Best of the Fest 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 and Shaw Island audience members can participate in that same conversation via Google Meet.

Parrot Kindergarten
Jennifer Taylor O’Connor is a lawyer, an animal cognition researcher, and a bird mom. When she adopted Ellie, a Goffin’s cockatoo with a fierce mind and seemingly boundless energy, she 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. For the first time, 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.

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.

Amy Herdy, Director
San Juan Islander 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. Betrayal in the Ranks (2003) spurred Congressional reforms in how the military handles sexual assault. Her collaborative works include The Invisible War, The Hunting Ground (CNN), The Bleeding Edge (2018), and Allen v. Farrow. Her films Britney v. Spears and Harry & Meghan both aired on Netflix. Parrot Kindergarten is her directorial debut.

The Best of the Fest Series
Each month through September Best of the Fest presents award-winning documentaries along with Q&As with the films’ directors and subjects. Programs begin at 7 pm. All programs will be at the San Juan Island Library, Lopez Island Library and Shaw Island Community Center. Check the full schedule at fhff.org.

Parrot Kindergarten is sponsored by The Toy Box., with support from the 2026 Best of the Fest In-kind Sponsor: The Journal
of the San Juan Islands and 2026 Best of the Fest Series Presenting Media Sponsor: CascadePBS.