“For us, ivory is worthless unless it is on our elephants,” says Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta in a televised statement, shortly before several vast hauls of severed elephant tusks — …
’s diamond-hard but humane documentary is most impressive in its equally divided sympathies between hunter, hunted and guardian.
Arriving on U.S. screens long after its debut at last year’s Tribeca fest, “When Lions Become Lambs” has racked up a long trail of festival dates and citations in the interim; most recently, it scored two well-earned craft nominations from the International Documentary Association.
That’s a perception abetted by the regulation military fatigues worn by Asan, one of a mini-army of game rangers employed by a local conservancy — and a former poacher himself, qualified for the position by the old “it takes a thief to catch a thief” rationale. He’s also the cousin of “X,” who runs a small-time poaching racket without getting any blood on his own hands, instead delegating the actual hunting to his assistant Lukas.
Asan may take the ostensibly noble route in becoming a ranger, yet it proves no way to make a living. He goes unpaid for months, further aggravating a fraught relationship with his wife and children, while the job proves just as grisly as his old one, with rangers encouraged to shoot poachers on sight. Life, then, has little value on either side of the law.
Deftly, evenly edited and shorn of narration, this is fine, judicious observational filmmaking, preoccupied as much with modest domestic tensions as with the queasy thrill of the chase: Away from the hunt, the cousins live in markedly similar poverty, mutual victims of an economy that offers no incentive to do the right thing.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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