Hey guys, I’m wondering if you’d be able to help me with this, but I recently remembered a film I saw years and years ago, and I have spent the last few days looking for it, but haven’t been able to find it at all.

I really only remember a few details and scenes, and I don’t know how accurate my memory will be, so please bear with me!

In the film, a kid (I think it was a young boy, but there may have been other kids present as well) has befriended some kind of large creature, and in one particular scene, they end up in some water – I think it was maybe some kind of moat or lake or something like that, and water seemed to harm this creature. I remember steam/smoke rising from the bubbling water as the creature laid down to die. (For some reason, I think I cam remember that the creature sacrifices itself in order to save the boy, but I’m not clear on that part)

The film was set in some kind of fantasy setting, and it looked to be decently old. I’m not sure exactly where it was set, but I think the boy was wearing some kind of tunic or something similar, and I think there were castles and stuff.

The monster was some kind of large black or dark-brown creature, and I think I remember it having feathers of some kind? For some reason I also seem to remember that the creature was called “Blackbird” or “Bluebird” or something along those lines, but I could be completely mistaken about it. The boy called its name a lot as it was dying in the water.

The film itself looked to be like maybe something that was made in the 80s? Though I’m less sure on that because it’s not on any of the “80s Fantasy” lists I see online. It had a similar kind of vibe to The Neverending Story (I’m 99% sure it wasn’t one of the Neverending Story films though; people keep telling me that’s what it was, but I’ve seen them recently and none of what I’m remembering here is in those films)

For extra context; I saw this film on TV, in the middle of the day, on a free-to-air network in Australia, some time in the Mid-2000s. So that being said, it may have also been some kind of old TV show or maybe an old obscure Aussie movie.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated – this has been doing my head in for the last two days.