THE WHITE LION

South Africa, 2010, 88 minutes, Colour.

John Kani, Jamie Bartlett, Thabo Malema, AJ van der Meere.

Directed by Michael Swan.

The White Lion will be popular with a wide audience. It is from South Africa and uses the range of landscapes, mountains and plains, jungle and woods, to great advantage.

It is also a film about animals, and a wide range of animals is filmed in their local habitat, their ordinary lives, groups, individuals, travelling, finding food, conflicts.

The format of the story is that an elder has a group of young children around a fire, and is narrating the story about a young African, his place in his tribe, his sense of destiny. The older tells the story of lions, the birth of a white lion cub, its survival, his relationship with its mother, its being lost, found, it struggles to survive. It is also the story of the lion growing, surviving, searching for food, conflicts with hyenas, rivalry with another lion, sharing food with the lion, and their roaming together.

Is also a story of the role of human beings, White human beings in this world. There are the hunters. There are also the local farmers. And there are also the tourists, the hunters, eager to bag a trophy as well as the guides on the hunt. The young African man, Gisani, is taken on by the guide after tracking down the white lion and seeing his destiny in protecting it.

The culmination is a hunt, the stubborn and vicious Afrikaner-type, eager to shoot the white lion. They track the lion, with Gisani eventually trying to prevent the death of the lion.

The white lion is also seeking another pack, another pride, a conflict so that he will find his place in the jungle – and this is the final vision of the white lion.

And, at the end, the elder reveals to the children that he is Gisani.

Michael Swan directs, co-writes and is also the cinematographer.

A film especially for those who enjoy National Geographic documentaries.