We all saw “Free Willy,” we all loved “Free Willy.” But what happened to the real Willy? In a tragic, confounding dose of irony, Keiko, the whale-actor who played Willy, was languising in a marine park in Mexico after filming. He was underweight, covered in skin lesions, suffering a drooping dorsal fin and predicted to die within months from poor health.

“Freeing Willy,” a new 12-minute mini-documentary from Retro Report and The New York Times, recounts the global campaign to “Free Keiko.” Thanks mostly to a huge donation from billionaire Craig McCaw, a $7.3 million rehabilitation tank was built for Keiko in Oregon, intended as a center where the orca whale could learn how to survive in the wild, a process Susan Orlean (who wrote about Keiko’s journey in the New Yorker) called “human beings teaching a whale to be a whale.” Born in Icelandic waters but caught captive as a baby, Keiko may have known how to star in a movie, but he didn’t know how to hold his breath for long periods, catch his own food, or swim in harsh waters.