Daniel Lee Barnett in My Bigfoot Life

MY BIGFOOT LIFE
Directed by Daniel Lee Barnett and Monika Gergelova
Certificate 12a
☆☆☆

This gentle documentary has at its centre a story of family love: of parents and grandparents helping raise a young man.

Daniel Lee Barnett is autistic. As a child he was selectively mute, and as his parents explain, could not thrive in mainstream education. We meet Daniel because, as his parents say, when he turns his attention to something he does so with real passion.

Daniel loved going out to the woods near his Somerset home, accompanied by Nanny and Gramps.
As the film explains, he and Nanny became forest explorers, and when he began watching documentaries about cryptozoologists and their search for Bigfoot he found his place.

He began a vlog about cryptozoology and it was picked up by big-time US TV presenters who appear on series called Expedition Bigfoot and Finding Bigfoot. They fly to England to meet Daniel and join him on a night-time exploration of his woods (an enjoyable experience all round, but of course with little hope of seeing more than an owl or a badger).

As this charming documentary gently walks us into the Somerset woods, it’s not so much about what you may find out there, it is the journey – and for Daniel, the journey has been a way of finding his place in the world. As dad Craig states: “He is an amazing boy but has a lot of trouble getting there. This is his way of learning.”

After becoming interested in the Bigfoot tales, he and Nanny decide to see what they can find on their doorstep.

This being the UK, the creature they come across are deer. But after finding a footprint near his Somerset home in the woods, he found a DNA firm to test it – it showed traces of squirrel and canine and, also, mysteriously, DNA of an ancient ape that must have once roamed the neighbourhood.

After laying out a backstory so we know who Daniel is and the challenges he has faced, we follow him on an adventure of a lifetime in the Pacific north-west.

Daniel is brave and his parents and grandparents are just terrific – Nanny and Gramps are the elders we need, and while this may be a film about the hunt for mystical beasts, at its heart it’s basically about love for our families.