Award-Winning ‘Bucks Harbor’ To Begin Oscar-Qualifying Run In New York

EXCLUSIVE: Bucks Harbor, one of the most acclaimed documentaries of the year, is about to begin its Oscar-qualifying theatrical run.

The film directed by Pete Muller opens at Firehouse: DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Film in Manhattan on December 4. The feature documentary set in a remote coastal village of Northern Maine, where generations of men have stoically fished the waters in an often-hazardous pursuit of a living, premiered in February at the Berlin Film Festival. At the Berlinale, it won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the Audience Award in the festival’s Panorama section. Bucks Harbor also won Best International Documentary Film at the Zurich Film Festival, Best Documentary Film at the Tacoma Film Festival in Washington State, the Audience Award at the Margaret Mead Film Festival in New York, and the Fowlie Audience Award at the Camden International Film Festival in Maine, among many other awards.

Bucks Harbor screens at DOC NYC on Sunday after being named to that festival’s Winners Circle for 2026. Watch an exclusive clip from the film below.

“Set against the rugged beauty of Downeast Maine, the film portrays a lobster fishing community shaped by the unforgiving coastal landscape,” notes a synopsis. “As Bucks Harbor delicately explores working class manhood, kinship and the act of listening, it situates human life alongside the ancient creatures that sustain it, offering a revelatory, searing and ultimately hopeful portrait.”

The documentary features several generations of indelible individuals in Bucks Harbor: David Cale, Vicki Patchell, Wayne Robinson, Mark Alley, Sharon Alley, Larson Alley, Mike Murphy, Kirby Murphy, Carter Murphy, Ryan Murphy, and Isaac Reynolds.

Muller, who makes his directorial debut with Bucks Harbor, won an Emmy as co-producer of The First Wave. He’s an award-winning photographer who spent more than a decade documenting conflict in post-colonial societies around the world. Muller developed his interest in photography as a youth after accompanying his mother while she worked night shifts as a newspaper photographer in Lynn, MA.

“[W]e’d race to fires, shootings, and other emergencies that crackled through the police scanner,” Muller writes in a director’s statement. “From the safety of the company car, where she insisted I remain, I’d watch her move through the flashing red and blue lights of bad situations. At the end of the night, in the darkroom, I’d ask questions about what we’d seen and why. Her answers were shaped by compassion and became the basis of my education about the world.

“I nourished my interest in people by studying history but learned I wasn’t built to sit quietly and read books. Visual journalism seemed a better fit as it rewarded my desire to be so close that I’d be shoved and splattered. For nearly 15 years, I worked as a photojournalist in Africa and the Middle East, seeking to understand and communicate the causes of armed conflict. During that time, I came to see ideas of masculinity as a central feature of the conflicts I witnessed.”

Muller continues, “In 2021, I returned to New England and began what would become Bucks Harbor. I spent the next five years in winding, intimate conversations with the film’s participants, who came to feel like extended family. Each felt deeply familiar, reminding me of relatives, close friends, and myself. While Bucks Harbor is built around their lives, it reflects mine, too.

“I’ve long interrogated the lessons we were taught as boys: be tough and strong, don’t accept humiliation, don’t express fear or insecurity. What did those lessons prepare us for? What do our families, friends, and societies truly want and need from us? And most importantly, how do we feel beneath the stoic exteriors we were encouraged to assume?”

Muller adds that his documentary “is not solely an exploration of men and masculinity. While men and boys offer central perspectives, women contribute vital, illuminating insights along the way. The film is about survival, love, and the emotional armor we all develop. It’s also about the experience of working people in the United States and the quiet courage and fortitude required just to get by. And it explores our abiding relationship with the natural world and the wisdom it offers if we’re willing to listen. I hope Bucks Harbor can serve as a constructive, humanistic tile in the mosaic of our social conversation and reflect my fundamental belief that we need each other. The more we can relate and empathize, the closer we might move toward shared understanding.”

Bucks Harbor is directed and produced by Pete Muller and produced by Nathan Golon and Noel Paul. The cinematography is by Nathan Golon and Pete Muller. Lobster cinematography is by Mark Unger, Anand Varma, and Pete Muller. Noel Paul edited the film. Nikolaj Hess composed the original score; the film also features an original composition by Hiss Golden Messenger. Executive producers are Kaitlin Yarnall and Greg Moga.

In the exclusive clip below, Bucks Harbor’s David Cale fishes from a dock with his cousin’s son, Isaac Reynolds.

You can watch the Bucks Harbor trailer here: