What the Oscar-nominated documentary The Elephant Whisperers tells us about indigenous communities and the perils of development

The Elephant Whisperers is directed by Kartiki Gonsalves.

Gonsalves was clear about one thing right from the start: The story she would tell, even though it touches on conservation and the impact of human development on wildlife, would be “positive”. “There are so many depressing things that one could have focused on,” she says. For example, Raghu was orphaned when his mother wandered into a human settlement looking for food during a prolonged drought in the region and was accidentally electrocuted. Those who follow the news in India are familiar with this story, coming from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and other parts of the country, of elephants, whose habitats have been relentless encroached upon, wandering far and wide in search of food and water, often meeting death through electrocution, train accidents and poisonings. It is only too easy to tell yet another dire tale of a species on the brink, pushed there by human activity. In spirit, then, Gonsalves’s film is closer to the Oscar-winning 2020 documentary, My Octopus Teacher, which also depicts an inter-species bond, weaving a larger story of how befriending even one animal has the potential to open the human heart and mind to the rest of the living world.

A still from The Elephant Whisperers. (Photo: Kartiki Gonsalves)

The Elephant Whisperers is Gonsalves’ directorial debut. Before this, she’s worked as cinematographer on nature documentaries and as a photographer. Her natural inclination, she says, is not only for documenting the forests themselves and the wildlife they contain, but also the human communities that live within them. “To that end, I was sure that I wanted Bomman and Bellie to narrate their own story, without an outsider coming in to talk,” she says. Gonsalves worked on this project with cinematographers Krish Makhija, Anand Bansal (who worked on Gamak Ghar, 2021) and Karan Thapliyal (who did the cinematography for Oscar-nominated Writing with Fire, 2021), suffusing every frame with natural light and bringing to life the lush natural beauty of Mudumalai. As with all nature documentaries, patience and the willingness to show up every day to document the unvarying routines of the elephants and their humans was a must. “I followed Raghu’s story for five years, and had about 450 hours of footage. There are thousands of Raghu baths in there, so many hours of him eating food or playing. But you need to be patient (with something like this), and you get scenes like the one where Bellie tells Ammu to sit down next to her. These are intimate moments, which cannot be planned,” she says.