Sitka's Hidden Wonders - 7 Day - Online Streaming Rental

This digital rental gives you seven days of access to watch the film on your phone, computer, or tablet—or cast it directly to your TV.  Rentals available during the holiday season 2025 only.

Sitka’s Hidden Wonders is a 40-minute wildlife documentary that blends sweeping cinematography with a deeply personal story of return. Told by award-winning wildlife filmmaker Ben Hamilton, the film explores what it means to truly see a place—through the hidden layers of one of Alaska’s wildest coastal ecosystems.

After nearly two decades traveling the world as a wildlife cinematographer, Ben returns to the place where it all began—Sitka, Alaska—to make sense of what this coastline has taught him about nature, time, and attention. It was here, as a young film student, that he first encountered a world so wild and so intricate it changed the course of his life. Sitka’s Hidden Wonders is his cinematic attempt to say thank you.

Filmed entirely in Sitka and the surrounding islands over the past decade, the film reveals the hidden layers of a coastal ecosystem shaped by extremes—where humpbacks feed in nutrient-rich waters, bears wander temperate rainforests, seabirds fly only under moonlight, and glowing plankton spark life from the abyss. Through quiet storytelling and intimate visuals, the project weaves natural history with personal reflection, inviting viewers to slow down and look more closely—not just at the wild, but at how we relate to it.

With more than 600,000 cruise visitors arriving in Sitka each summer, the film was originally created as a theatrical experience to help short-term travelers connect more deeply with the place they’ve briefly stepped into—revealing what they might otherwise overlook and inviting them to leave with a greater sense of reverence.

Made independently over years of returning to the same forests and shores, this is a filmmaker’s attempt to honor a place that continues to teach him how to see.