An award-winning documentary about a flock of wild parrots and the homeless man who adopted them is the Bermuda International Film Festival?s May Film Night selection.

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill will screen on Thursday at 7.30 p.m. in the Tradewinds Auditorium at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute.

The film, by director Judy Irving, won a best film award at the International Wildlife Film Festival. It tells the true story of a Bohemian St. Francis and his remarkable relationship with a flock of wild green-and-red parrots, BIFF said.

Mark Bittner, a homeless street musician in San Francisco, falls in with the flock as he searches for meaning in his life, unaware that the wild parrots will bring him everything he needs.

The film celebrates urban wildness, Bohemian and avian, and links the parrots? antics to human behaviour. Although he is no scientist and this is not a ?nature film?, Mark becomes something of an expert as he consults local birders, and as he feeds, names, studies, and protects the cherry-headed conures ? escaped pets who have begun to breed in the wilds of the city.

Parrot ?stars? include Connor, a lonely blue-crowned conure, ostracised by the cherry heads; Picasso and Sophie, an affectionate pair who love to cuddle; and Pushkin, a single father who raises three babies on his own. A surprise ending ties the themes together and completes Mark?s search for meaning.

?Judy Irving?s terrific documentary, ?The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill? is ostensibly about birds, but only in the way that a game of Scrabble is about tiles?these are creatures as complicated as we are,? says the Boston Globe?s Wesley Morris.

Tickets are available for purchase now at www.biff.bm. Tickets to BIFF Film Nights are $8 for BIFF Film Club members, and $10 for non-members.