Flying Elephants – A Mother’s Hope, a short film directed by Prakash Matada and executive-produced by Dr. Krithi Karanth, is a part of the inaugural Official Selection Program at the Wildscreen Film Festival 2020. The film is supported by the Centre for Wildlife Studies and Saving Nature.
Flying Elephants – A Mother’s Hope was picked as one of only 18 short films from hundreds of submissions from more than 40 countries. Wildscreen is the most prestigious wildlife film festival in the world, also hosting the Panda awards, popularly called the ‘Green Oscars’.
Flying Elephants took about two years to make, and is six minutes long. The story is narrated in the Betta Kuruba tribal language, in the voice of a mother elephant.
Flying Elephants poignantly depicts how human interventions such as forest fragmentation and wildlife trade have disrupted the movement and lives of elephants, who are rightful inheritors of the earth as we are. The film ends on an optimistic note – to move the audience and mobilise efforts towards the conservation of elephants and their remaining natural habitats.
“Flying Elephants’ a short film, told through the eyes of a mother elephant, pits their glorious past against this century’s reality of survival in the Anthropocene, where elephant habitat is being destroyed at an alarming rate. With this film, it has been my mission to shed light on these sensitive, emotional, and socially intelligent creatures that rightfully deserve their natural world,” says Prakash Matada, the director of the film.
The selection also features films from established heavyweights of the natural history genre, including the first documentary by Apple TV+, ‘The Elephant Queen’, and BBC Natural History Unit’s ‘Earth from Space’ and ‘Pangolins – The World’s Most Wanted Animal’.
“We are incredibly honored that this powerful and moving film on our Asian elephants is the only Asian film. With the growing intensity of conservation issues, particularly human-elephant conflict, I hope it inspires people to act further to help conserve our magnificent and revered elephants,” says Dr. Krithi K. Karanth the Executive Producer of the film
