When Michael Parfit and Suzanne Chisholm first travelled to Nootka Sound to write about an orphaned orca named Luna, they were determined to keep their distance.

The husband-and-wife team knew that the whale had been separated from its pod and, desperate for social contact, had begun interacting with humans: swimming alongside their boats; bringing them little strips of cedar bark, like a dog with a chew toy; and even allowing them to pet his tongue, which he loved.

But scientists determined that this interaction was bad for Luna, that his growing dependence on people would mean eventually that someone, or some whale, would inadvertently get hurt. Humans, they said, should ignore him, no matter how much he demanded their attention.

So Parfit and Chisholm put their Zodiac in the water and headed up the shoreline toward a rocky area where they could unobtrusively observe Luna. They travelled at 18 knots—above the whale's reported top speed of 15 knots. The two felt exhilarated when, in the distance, they saw a flicker of white on the surface of the water. Then Luna came to give a proper hello.

“All of a sudden, he comes out of the water about 50 metres away, but he's slightly behind us. And I thought, ”˜Okay, that's kind of neat to see,' ” Parfit recalled on the phone from the couple's home near Victoria. “Then we were only a few hundred metres off the rocks, and he just exploded out of the water right next to this little boat. Boom. Right there,” Parfit said, excitement still in his voice. “And from the moment we met him, he changed our lives.”

Four years after that initial meeting, what started as a short article for Smithsonian magazine has become a book deal and a feature-length documentary called Saving Luna, which premiered at last year's Vancouver International Film Festival and kicks off its theatrical run at the Ridge Theatre on Friday (December 5).

Shot around and in Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, the picturesque film tells the story of Luna and the humans who surrounded him, including: local Natives who strongly believed the whale was an embodiment of their late chief (before his death just weeks earlier, he promised he would return as an orca); government scientists who were charged with the task of keeping people away despite Luna's persistent attempts at interaction; whale biologists who felt that isolation was cruel; and the locals who fell head over heels for the unusual visitor—as well as those who wanted him dead.

It also looks at how Chisholm and Parfit broke a cardinal rule of journalism and decided to speak out. “We grappled with that a lot,” Chisholm said. “But we had the benefit of talking to a lot of different people, and we felt like we had a pretty good handle on the story. And it became clear to us that the policy of trying to keep Luna and people apart just simply wasn't working.”

In March 2006, Luna died after being struck by a tugboat's prop.

Since the film's VIFF premiere, Saving Luna has travelled to festivals around the globe, picking up awards almost everywhere it goes.

“It's Luna's work; it really is. He was extraordinary,” said Parfit, who, like most filmgoers who see Saving Luna, was amazed by the whale's capacity for friendship—even when some treated him badly. “He kept coming and kept trusting, and it was that trust that people wanted to honour. People still talk about that.

“I mean, people in Nootka Sound will talk about Luna until the day they die, as will we.”