To me it’s like Australians are on the frontlines of this war, and it is a war at the bottom of the world to save the planet.

- Director Louis Psihoyos

Doco-thriller The Cove has got people talking all over the world, but the film’s director says Australians in particular should take notice.

The expose on dolphin slaughter in the village of Taiji, Japan has been collecting awards at film festivals around the globe, including two of the audience awards at the Sydney Film Festival last month.

Director Louis Psihoyos is in Australia to show The Cove at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), and says he hopes to galvanise local support against the practice.

“To me it’s like Australians are on the frontlines of this war, and it is a war at the bottom of the world to save the planet,” Psihoyos told AAP.

“I really feel like it’s really important to give people here, organisations here, something to rally around.”

The documentary was the brainchild of Psihoyos and long-time dive buddy Jim Clark, the billionaire founder of Netscape who is married to Aussie model Kristy Hinze.

The two formed The Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS) in 2005, and this is their first film.

Psihoyos, who was a National Geographic photographer for 35 years, travelled with Flipper dolphin trainer turned activist Ric O’Barry to the small fishing village of Taiji, a major source for dolphins.

Some are sold live to theme parks, but a further 23,000 dolphins killed for meat at this secret cove each year, in a brutal exercise that turns the ocean red with blood.

“I couldn’t believe that in this day and age a culture was killing dolphins,” says Psihoyos, who describes the scene as like something from a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

“You can very quickly tell there’s something very evil going on there.

“This town really did have this dark, dirty secret.”

To capture evidence they needed, Psihoyos assembled a crack team of free-divers, marine technicians and clandestine operations experts, and gathered high-tech equipment like military-grade thermal cameras and hydrophones.

They made seven trips to Taiji, constantly trying to evade the police, who were tracking them around the clock.

“The trick was to try to make a movie while there’s people who want to kill you, and people that want to arrest you, Psihoyos says.

“It was a lot scarier than the movie shows.”

The film also reveals that dolphin meat is being sold to the Japanese people as whale meat, but is much more toxic because of its high mercury levels.

Psihoyos likens dolphins to “swimming toxic waste dumpsites”.

The film has so far spurred local authorities to halt the practice of feeding free dolphin meat to school children, but Psihoyos hopes with enough publicity they can end dolphin killing altogether.

“It’s ironic that the only way we’ll be able to save a dolphin is by proving to the Japanese that these animals are so toxic that they shouldn’t be considered food,” he says.

The Cove features a number of high-profile Australians, including actress Isabel Lucas who takes part in a peaceful protest, freesurfer David Rastovich who describes how his life was saved by a dolphin, and outspoken former federal environment minister Ian Campbell.

“I didn’t notice how many Australians were in the film until we played the Sydney Film Festival, and I thought, everybody in the theatre probably thinks an Australian made the film,” Psihoyos says.

There is talk that The Cove could pick up an Oscar nomination, on top of the growing number of accolades it has already scored.

Psihoyos hopes any awards just encourage more people to see the film and take action.

“We’re trying to create this tsunami of negative publicity for the Japanese government so they turn this around,” he says.

The Cove screens this Saturday at MIFF, and opens nationally on August 20.