LOS ANGELES – When marine biologist Maxim Chakilev flings open the door of his ramshackle Siberian hut in the Oscar-nominated short documentary “Haulout” to find 100,000 honking and heaving walruses, the effect is breathtakingly cinematic.
For almost two minutes, the screen is crowded with jostling animals, their guttural snorts filling the soundtrack and putting the viewer right in the middle of an astonishing natural spectacle.
The scene, the centerpiece of a 25-minute film on how climate change affects the natural world,…
