Million Dollar Pigeons: Nifty Doc Soars on Brilliant Birds and Kooky Keepers

By Kim Hughes

Rating: B+

The best documentaries take viewers somewhere they’d be unlikely or unable to go otherwise. By that measure, Million Dollar Pigeons, which offers a peek inside the insular, rarefied, high-stakes and apparently back-stabbing world of pigeon racing, is fascinating.

Really, it’s hard to imagine a place where seemingly ordinary pigeons — those ubiquitous and otherwise overlooked and unconsidered feathered city dwellers, often pejoratively referred to as “rats with wings” — are adored, exalted, and meticulously groomed to race internationally for big money.

But this highly watchable film, which screened last year at the Hot Docs festival, follows a globetrotting clutch of “fanciers,” almost exclusively men, who travel from around the world to South Africa and, more successfully, to Thailand to race their fierce winged athletes for cash and bragging rights.

And athletes they are, flying “350 miles in 90-degree weather.” Fanciers don’t take single birds; they take “armies of birds,” paying $1,000 a pop to register.  The sport is framed as equal parts obsession and expensive hobby.

There’s no denying the competition can be intense. Among the many characters introduced is Armando, a Belgian-bred champ which sold to a Chinese fancier for $1.42 million U.S. in 2019. Yes, that price shattered records.

Racing chops notwithstanding, smart money says most people couldn’t pick Armando out of a flock on a city street for twice that amount. Shows how much we laypeople know.

Nevertheless, the cast of wingless characters here are as beguiling as their birds. There’s Irishman John O’Brien, with two kids and 60 pigeons to his name. He galvanizes his local amateur pigeon club members to pool their resources and enter to race against well-heeled, monied fanciers from Asia and beyond. The concept doesn’t, ahem, fly, with all the members at home.

Then there’s legendary fancier, racer, and breeder Mike Ganus from Indiana who has, by his account, been racing pigeons since age four (including on his wedding day) and who now, with wife Debbie Ganus, consistently cleans up at races internationally. “When we go now, people know who we are,” he says. “We’re not bragging but, we’re, like, celebrities. ‘There’s Ganus!’”

And how does one train a pigeon to take off where directed, fly where directed and then land where directed? Therein lies one of the doc’s many captivating reveals. With 9,000 pigeons from 40 countries competing in South Africa, you can bet there are logistics and intricacies ahoy. And yes, folks take their birds very seriously indeed.

Filmmaker Gavin Fitzgerald is clearly aware that some viewers will see the whole enterprise as vaguely absurd, and he offers a gentle wink-nudge throughout the proceedings, which pivot around the South African Million Dollar Pigeon Race, the apex of pigeon racing globally. Well, mostly, until high drama and controversy abound, giving the film its necessary climax.

The outcomes make the pigeon fanciers seem even more endearing… and occasionally unhinged. These are, after all, people willing to risk livelihoods, decades, and personal relationships for a passion they admit they cannot — will not — abandon no matter how high the personal sacrifice.

Ganus concedes one of his winning birds set him back $119,000. Small compared to horse racing maybe, but not exactly chump change.

“And the prices I get for babies [baby pigeons bred by previous winners that Ganus sells to other competitors] are probably in the top 10 in the world. There’s a lot of jealousy,” he says. “Jealousy is one of the biggest evils in the pigeon sport.”

Or, as a member of O’Brien’s team puts it plainly, “Funny, when you’re an average flyer, everybody likes you. When you become a good flyer, you’re about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit.”

And you thought you’re Thursday night Euchre match was fraught.

Million Dollar Pigeons. Directed by Gavin Fitzgerald. Playing at Toronto's Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema Feb. 3 (6:15 pm), Feb. 4 (noon, 6 pm), Feb 5 (7:30 pm) and Feb. 6 (6:30 pm).