After The Elephant Whisperers won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Film (Short Subject), Bellie Amma, who featured in the film, recalled how Raghu, the baby elephant in the documentary, first came into her family’s care, “When I saw his condition and his cut off tail, I initially thought it wouldn’t be possible to raise him. But my family said, let’s try as much we can to cure him. We managed to do so, and by the time he grew up, Bommi came along to us.” Remembering how she and her family were approached for the film, Bellie added, “Now the film has gone all the way to the Oscars, all of us at Mudumalai are really happy.”
The film, directed by Kartiki Gonsalves, follows a couple, Bomman and Bellie, who adopt two orphaned elephants in Tamil Nadu’s Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. The Award was announced at the 95th Academy Awards ceremony, popularly known as the Oscars, which was held on Sunday, March 12, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California.
While accepting the Award on stage, Kartiki said, “I stand here today to speak for the sacred bond between us and our natural world. For the respect of indigenous communities, and empathy towards other living beings we share our space with. And finally for coexistence.”
The Elephant Whisperers was a directorial debut for Kartiki, who has previously worked as a natural historian, social documentary filmmaker, and photojournalist. In an interview with The Hindu earlier, she had said that she wanted people to understand the intelligence of elephants through the story of Raghu, the first elephant Bomman and Bellie rescued. “The most special thing about the story is the unusual family dynamic Bomman and Bellie share with Raghu,” she had said.
The film was in the running with four other short documentaries — Haulout, How Do You Measure A Year?, The Martha Mitchell Effect, and Stranger At The Gate. Another film from India, All That Breathes, was in the running in the Best Documentary Feature Film category, but lost out to Navalny directed by Daniel Roher, about former Russian presidential candidate Alexei Navalny.