After decades of awareness about the evils of poaching and the relentless decimation of the world’s rhino species you’d hope that these brutal practices would now be a thing of the past unfortunately, that’s very much far from the truth with a reported 499 rhinos killed in South Africa in 2023 – a concerning 10% rise on the previous year. Born out of Kindred Films’ eight episode series of stories from across the globe created to highlight our interconnectedness, Oscar nominated short The Last Ranger directed by Cindy Lee is a moving and at times infuriating story about the rangers who risk their lives daily to protect these magnificent creatures against the callous actions of the poachers who pursue them for profit. It is also a bellwether that perhaps people are finally overcoming an aversion to the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles which allows us to connect with stories no matter where they spring from, given that isiXhosa is the predominant language spoken throughout. Joining A Lien, The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, Anuja and I’m Not a Robot to round off DN’s series of interviews with the 2025 Academy Award Live Action Short Film nominees (we’ve also been speaking to the documentary and animation nominees), I sat down with Lee and writer/producer Darwin Shaw to find out how they managed to shoot The Last Ranger on the hoof in the Amakhala Game Reserve in less than five days and the number of people it takes to turn over a sleeping rhino.
[The following interview contains mild spoilers and is also available to watch at the end of this article.]
I know The Last Ranger was an incredibly collaborative project with lots of different people involved. Could you give us a little introduction to the film and your respective roles?
Cindy Lee: So, my brother David S. Lee wrote the screenplay and he collaborated with Darwin and his partner Will Hawkes, turning it from a long-form film into a short film. They came to South Africa to direct, my brother suggested me and voila, I got the job. My background is commercial so I do know how to make things look beautiful but do it quickly which we needed to do ultimately when we went down from five days to four and a half days.
Darwin Shaw: The film’s conception was part of an anthology that Will and I started to develop during the pandemic. We were in our rooms in LA, both actors originally, and we had this idea that while the pandemic was on, we could go to all the countries in the world through people we’d met through filming and develop these stories. When lockdown finished and opened up in each country, we could jump in and do little mini-films then put them together to create this anthology. It really took off and we had 120 film scripts come in. We were working 24-7 on numerous timelines, sometimes with interpreters, collecting these stories. We eventually had a pro forma of what would be needed for the stories to become a holistic piece – it needed to be a powerful human story with an important message, set against the backdrop of the pandemic but not about it. We wanted music to be crucial with each country having its musical style and specific filmmaking approach while ensuring they would all fit together.
It felt like such a rich way of talking about protecting Mother Nature by having these women at the centre of the story.
David, Cindy’s brother who’s the EP and an actor, brought this wonderful story. A story about animals being affected by the pandemic and we thought what a great way this would potentially be to finish this series. We shot our first one in Denmark and then the three of us worked on this script for a very long time until we created something with archetypal themes within it. It went from being originally a male story to a female story which we felt was much more interesting. We wanted to explore this relationship between a mother who doesn’t have a daughter and a daughter who doesn’t have a mother which isn’t something you see much in filmmaking. It felt like such a rich way of talking about protecting Mother Nature by having these women at the centre of the story. One of the things we wanted to do with all these stories was to shoot them in the language of the country. At the time people said nobody watches foreign language films but we believed this is the world, we were all being affected by this unique event in history which demonstrated just how interconnected we all are.
How did that decision to tell this story in isiXhosa impact your casting process?
CL: South Africa has 11 official languages and this is just one of them. We didn’t have the biggest pool of actors to start with and then we had to find actors who could speak fluent isiXhosa. Then I had to find an 11-year-old girl who could speak isiXhosa so our pool went from this big to absolutely tiny. We made this film for South Africa. We’re trying to change people’s perceptions of rhino poaching in South Africa, we face a pandemic and we’re going to lose our rhinos if things don’t change. We wanted to make the communities listen. Nelson Mandela had a very famous quote: “If you speak to somebody in a language they understand you speak to their head but if you speak to them in their own language you speak to their heart.” If we really wanted communities to take heed of what’s going on we needed to speak to them in their own language. Also for me, I find actors are better when they speak their mother tongue. I can tell you now we would never have got those performances if it was in English. Never!
If we really wanted communities to take heed of what’s going on, we needed to speak to them in their own language.
We had people there that were bilingual who could double check the language. We’d spend time with the actors so they understood the nuances. I don’t speak isiXhosa but we had people following the whole time to make sure they were saying the same thing. Although to be honest, we didn’t have time to scrutinize every word. We had one or two takes per scene then we had to move on so we just had to pray to god that they were saying the right words.
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DS: We had five days to shoot this film and somebody got Covid on day one on the flight over from America so we lost the whole morning while we had to test everyone. If we had one person who was positive the whole thing was cancelled so it was a whole drama and we lost a 10th of our time. What we found out later actually was that Liyabona Mroqoza, who plays Litha, doesn’t speak fluent isiXhosa and she’d gone to the actress Avumile Qongqo, the other ranger, and confessed this to her. So then they were behind the scenes working on the language to make sure it was right. Thank God we didn’t know about it.
CL: Actually, she does speak isiXhosa but she doesn’t speak the deep rural isiXhosa and it was written like that because that’s where the people live. There are different guttural sounds and slightly different words that she needed to learn but she does speak isiXhosa, just a different version.
The film has such beautiful coverage of the game reserve, were you able to capture everything within those four and a half days?
DS: There might have been one drone shot which we went back for. We found a conservationist who had a drone and he sent us a bunch of stuff but apart from that one shot, everything was done in those four and a half days.
What was your gear set up? Were you able to use any dollies or rigs, what was involved?
CL: No dollies, nothing. It was the hardest job I’ve ever done. We were shooting with the open vehicle that you see most of the film taking place on. If our leads were on that we were on two more following that vehicle, that was it. For the wildlife footage, we rigged a camera in a handheld rig but otherwise, it was all handheld. We always had to remain in the vehicles because we were in the middle of an actual game reserve. What was also really important for us was getting the actors and the rhino in the same shot as often as we could. I never wanted the audience to think we had cheated it. When we pull from the rhino to them watching or we see them in the same shot, we had to get that. So we’re tracking the rhino, we find the rhino, we bring them in, make sure the light is in the right place, then we’ve got to move our vehicle, then the rhino moves, then we’ve got to move again…
What was also really important for us was getting the actors and the rhino in the same shot as often as we could. I never wanted the audience to think we had cheated it.
DS: The amount of shots of rhino bottoms we have is incredible!
CL: It was very tight. You can’t take lights with you so there were a couple of scrims just to put up on the vehicle maybe while we were shooting. Inside we managed to light a little bit for the opening scene but otherwise, it was all natural light and shoot as fast as we can.
DS: We’re all used to seeing documentary films by David Attenborough but those films take sometimes up to five years. We just had these four days and it was very run and gun at times, after which it was about sifting through it.
CL: Yeah. I’m so surprised we got what we got because a lot of it was hit and miss. We don’t know they are. We’ve got to track them, find them, then put up a camera in a moving vehicle and get it. It’s like, are you mad? I don’t know how we do that.
DS: We had to be up at two in the morning as they were tracking these rhinos in the dark. Then the vets had to get their teams to them because they wanted to do various procedures on the rhinos. We paid for that to happen because they had no money because of Covid but once they were done, there was a 10 to 15 minute window after where we could shoot. So we’d find them, they would tranquillize them, but then they ran for a mile before they actually fell asleep so we didn’t know where they were going to end up. Which meant we had to construct all our scenes not knowing what the geography would be and somehow try to piece it together.
We had this mind map of the battle with the poachers, the fathers and the rhino and then we had to match it with the footage of the real poaching incident. There were a lot of moving parts and we didn’t know if it was going to work. We planned it enough that we thought, “Well, this can work” apart from the moment when the rhino went to sleep on the wrong side. We have this two ton rhino asleep on its left side and we had to get like 20 people to actually turn the rhino onto its other side so it matched. It was that kind of production.
Let’s talk about the chainsaw scene which is very effective and therefore deeply disturbing. How did you approach that?
DS: That was very much in the writing of the piece. In reality, it’s only vets who use chainsaws to preemptively take the horn off the rhinos but we thought that was such a great device to really visceralize this whole experience. Because it makes a noise most poachers wouldn’t use that but we figured if they wanted to do it quickly that would be a way of doing it. It also gave our heroes a reason to be drawn to that in the story. It’s a very horrific image and is representative of man and technology against nature.
CL: We spoke about if we wanted to show it or not. Originally Darwin and Will didn’t want to have that scene in the film because they thought it was really unsettling and very ugly. They were worried we were going to push people away from the film but it is a vital part of making people understand the horrors of what these rhinos go through when this happens to them. What you’re seeing is nothing compared to what actually happens to them. You can see in the footage on Litha’s camera of the real Thandi how much blood is lost and how horrific it really is. That’s why we chose to show that on the camera. We wanted to, first of all, highlight the real Thandi, but show the horrors of it small on a camera. We didn’t want to overdo it. We felt that not physically seeing her without the horn on close up, just the sound and then just the horn and a bit of blood was enough but not overkill.
They were worried we were going to push people away from the film but it is a vital part of making people understand the horrors of what these rhinos go through when this happens to them.
All your actors give very physical performances, how did you work with them to prepare for those roles?
DS: Avumile, who plays the main ranger, was the runner-up Miss South Africa twice. She’s an incredibly intelligent woman with degrees and was a journalist for a while. She clearly was the character but we wondered if she would have the physicality to really match this. We got one of our partners, an organisation called the Global Conservation Force who train rangers to help. Mike Veale brought a lovely woman called Vuyo to spend time with Avumile. For her, understanding the depths of certainty and how much these people are willing to sacrifice for these creatures helped her. She literally changed in a day, it was fascinating to watch. She went from being an actor playing a ranger to actually being a ranger.
And your young actress Liyabona’s performance is equally impressive.
CL: Yeah we got lucky with her. When we found her and saw her self-tape we knew she had the emotional intelligence to pull this off. That’s what is so special about her, she goes to a place that she understands. I don’t know how an 11-year-old did that. When she tells Khuse, “Don’t go, don’t go, stay with me”, where does that come from? I barely directed her. I spent a bit of time with her and walked through a few of the scene, explained what she needed to do and told her where she needed to cry. It’s her first performance!
DS: What was extraordinary is her accessibility and natural instinct. This was her first ever acting role, apart from some stuff she did when very young at school. She had so many technical things to achieve with only one or two takes, technical moments interspersed with crying. She just had an inherent understanding of the camera. The moment when she gives Khuse the toy rhino and what’s going on in her head – that was stuff that she figured out herself. She understands something about humanity and human relations way beyond her age. But what makes it work I think is the fact that it’s undercut by the subtlety and restraint of Avumile’s performance. By itself, it could be melodrama but when you see it in context, it’s that emotion which basically breaks through the hard shell of the Khuse character.
How was the post-production process and adding the music, I know that you got a local choir involved too?
DS: The edit was long and hard that’s why it’s taken us so long. It took a lot of work from Cindy and the LA team, we probably spent two years editing. Will and I spent countless nights until five in the morning redoing little bits and thinking, “How can we make this work?” but eventually we had the cut. We always had this conception that we wanted to wake up in Africa and just follow this young person for a long time because we needed the audience to care about these characters and believe in the high level of emotion. In a short film you don’t necessarily have time for that and it kind of goes against the rules of short filmmaking.
We were very fortunate that John Powell, who’s also nominated for Wicked, wanted to support the film. He gave his time and paid for some of the musicians. His partner had seen a viral video of this choir and John said there was something unique about that girl’s voice. The choir was started by a 19-year-old a year and a half ago, they had been rehearsing in a shipping container in Khayelitsha. He heard these two girls singing by the side of the road and just said to them, let’s make a choir and now Disney have approached them after seeing The Last Ranger.
CL: I must say when I heard that John Powell track it changed everything. It was just quite extraordinary, those voices, the singing. And you know what was so beautiful about it? It was pulled so far back which I really loved. The music was only there when it needed to be there. I’m very big on that. Everything I do I try not to put a lot of music on because I believe that if the actors can’t carry the performances themselves we don’t have a performance. If you’re throwing music on to make somebody feel something and the performances don’t do that then we’re in trouble. It’s the building of a story and building of an emotion like in the beginning and the end where we needed that music and the tension, that’s where the music played its role. That’s the sign of a really good composer, they don’t just slap everything on.
This film cannot be made in another country anywhere in the world. They don’t have the rhinos, they don’t have the people, they don’t have the language, they don’t have the location. It is a uniquely South African film.
What has the response been like in South Africa to The Last Ranger?
DS: A couple of days ago the Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture put out a press release talking about how the whole country is now behind this film and we’re a beacon for the people, for the artists, for the story – how we’re holding a torch for South African cinema.
CL: It’s an isiXhosa film in the Eastern Cape this film cannot be made in another country anywhere in the world. They don’t have the rhinos, they don’t have the people, they don’t have the language, they don’t have the location. It is a uniquely South African film in one of our official African languages. That’s why our country is so excited because it shows them that we can make films in our language about our country that people want to watch. As you said, it’s a universal story. That is just mind-blowing that in this language, in this country, about this…still people find a way to connect to it. It’s not just about the rhino, it’s about the relationship between Litha and Khuselwa, the bond they form and the love they have for each other. Then it’s gone and her having to suddenly grow up and take control. Those are the beautiful little things that so many people can relate to.
At the end of the movie, there was a name of a protection agency to donate to.
I would like that name so I can make a donation.