Cindy Lee on her Oscar-nominated short
The last ranger
Cindy Lee
The Last Ranger
Written by David S. Lee, Darwin Shaw & Will Hawkes
Directed by Cindy Lee
The live action Oscar-nominated short The Last Ranger seamlessly blends human connection and conservationism together to highlight the interconnectedness of the natural world and the socio-economics causing its destruction. It is also a truly South African story, set and shot in the Eastern Cape on the Amakhala game reserve and performed mainly in Xhosa, one of the country’s official languages.
The film is set during Covid, when the lack of tourism means there are fewer rangers protecting the animals from poachers. In a village near to a game reserve, ten-year-old Litha (Liyabona Mroqoza) and her father live in poverty. When he heads out for work one day, Litha wanders along the road where she encounters one of the only working rangers, Khuselwa (Avumile Qongqo), who takes her on a mini safari to see the animals. With her fellow ranger and vet elsewhere on the reserve, crisis hits when a poacher arrives on the scene and Khuselwa is left to single-handedly defend the rhinos. As she watches the chaos unfurl, Litha is thrust into the violent reality of rhino horn hunting and its devastating impact on her own family.
The Last Ranger is as much a warning as it is an homage to wildlife. It’s also a universal story about love, forgiveness and loss that, as the film’s writer David S. Lee says, just happens to be built around the theme of conservation.
Here, director Cindy Lee speaks to Molly Lipson about the real-life story of Thundi the rhino that inspired the film, casting the perfect Litha and how The Last Ranger is already changing the lives of communities in South Africa.
Molly Lipson: Where did the idea for this film come from?
Cindy Lee: What happens to the rhino in the film happened to that actual rhino in real life – Thundi was attacked by poachers and her horn was hacked off. After heavy surgery, the vet Dr Fawlds managed to save her life. My brother went to school with Dr Fawlds, who he portrays in the fillm, and a couple of years ago he was with him at the Amakhala Game Reserve at the site of a real poaching, and sadly that rhino didn’t make it. My brother was really emotional and he asked his friend what he could do. He was living in America at the time, and the vet told him to make a film, and so that’s what he did.
ML: How did you find the cast? All the performances are all incredible, especially Liyabona Mroqoza who plays Litha.
CL: Part of this journey that’s been so bittersweet is that my mother, who was one of the first casting directors ever in South Africa, sadly passed away before this film came out. [Moonyeenn Lee was a renowned agent and casting director.] My brother and I grew up around actors, and my mom really made the importance of casting very clear to us. South Africa doesn't have a particularly big pool of actors and we struggled to find our perfect Litha, but eventually we got a tape through from Liyabona and we just knew. She had never acted before! And in the tape she performed the scene where her character is crying and crying, and we were all just so relieved when we saw it because we knew we had our film.
ML: We don’t see the poacher hacking off Thundi’s horn, but that scene is still so viscerally violent. Why did you choose to keep that violence in the film?
CL: We had a really big debate about this with our American producers, but this film had to be real - this actually happened to Thundi. We didn’t want to take away from the gruesomeness of what actually happens to the rhinos and how horrific it is. We had to walk a fine line between being truthful enough to make people squirm, but not too much to make them walk out of the cinema. The sound design played a huge part with the sound of the actual horn being taken off Thundi’s body.
ML: In the film, the rhino is shot with a tranquilizer dart by the poacher before her horn is sawn off. Litha, who witnesses the whole thing, then stands over Thundi in a silent vigil, placing her hand on the rhino’s body. How did you manage to film that scene?
CL: The rhinos in the film were darted in real life, but only because they actually needed procedures done. Part of the money that we raised to make the film went towards these procedures, which took eight minutes, and the rhinos are only allowed to be sedated for twenty minutes before being woken up. We only had a tiny window to shoot those scenes, and one of the rhinos actually fell down in the wrong direction for shooting so twenty people had to quickly pick her up before she was too heavily sedated and move her. When we started shooting the scene, everyone got so emotional, but luckily Liyabona was an absolute pro and went right up to the rhinos, asked me what to do and did the scene perfectly.
ML: She’s a star in the making. What’s next for her?
CL: The agency my mum ran has taken her on as a client now, and there’s a UK agent interested in repping her. She’s actually coming to the Oscars with her mum, along with Avumile Qongpo who plays the ranger.
ML: You’ve described this as a truly South African film - can you explain what you mean by that?
CL: We made this film to make a difference in South Africa, not with the intention of winning an award, especially not an Oscar! In other words, we didn’t make this film for an American or global audience, this was for South Africans. Nelson Mandela said something really powerful: if you speak to somebody in a language that they understand, that goes to their head, but if you speak to them in their own language that goes to their heart. So we decided to make this film in Xhosa [one of the country’s official languages spoken by over eight million people] to be clear that this was a message for them, not for the film industry.
ML: The music in the film is so beautiful. What’s the story behind that?
CL: We were so lucky that the incredible John Powell [the British composer known for Wicked and Don’t Worry Darling] loved the film and wanted to be involved. He then brought on the Thanda Choir which is from Khayeltisha, one of South Africa’s poorest townships, and it’s put the choir on a global scale. They’ve been approached by huge companies to write scores, and this really will help create economic opportunities in a very poor community. That’s really what’s so exciting about this film – the power it has to change lives and attitudes.