Logline
No Fear No Favor goes to the front lines of Africa’s poaching crisis with women and men determined to protect their living wildlife heritage.
Synopsis
In the heart of Zambia’s vast Kafue wilderness, women and men risk their lives to counter losses from Africa’s poaching crisis. NO FEAR NO FAVOR enters their world at an intimate level, where community meets wilderness. We meet local people who have staked their future on sustaining African wildlife. One, a single mother raising three young girls, does high risk undercover work, and is routinely arrested along with poachers she has identified. Another is a former elephant poacher who now works as an armed guardian protecting orphaned baby elephants. And a third helped rescue the infant elephant, “Suni”, who had been mutilated with an ax by the poachers who killed her mother. He is now Education Director for Kafue National Park’s outreach program, reaching thousands of schoolchildren every month. NO FEAR NO FAVOR focuses on Zambians as key players, rightful stakeholders in the survival of Africa’s iconic wildlife.
In NO FEAR NO FAVOR we see the beginnings of grassroots efforts that both sustain endangered species, and help thwart illegal activity. There is an intimate connection between poverty and poaching. By reversing that dynamic – so that poor communities profit from local conservation – wildlife thrives. This represents an approach for sustaining wildlife and wilderness areas everywhere.
Mira Bank’s award winning documentaries have been seen and honored widely. A member of the Academy of Motion Pictures, her work has explored the lives of women, minorities, and people living in remote corners of the world. Shot over six years in strife-torn northeast India, THE ONLY REAL GAME (on Netlflix), was an unlikely human rights/baseball documentary. Bank’s LAST DANCE (Academy Award shortlist) followed a fang and claw collaboration between Pilobolus Dance Company and Maurice Sendak on a haunting holocaust-themed dance work.