Ross Kauffman offers out-of-ordinary film on nature with ‘Tigerland’

A tiger stares straight at the camera’s lens in one of the scenes in Ross Kauffman’s ‘Tigerland’. Photo courtesy of Discovery Channel

MANILA, Philippines — Academy Award-winning director Ross Kauffman puts nature films in a different light as he peeked into the dangers tigers face through the eyes of activists in a documentary titled “Tigerland.”

“Tigerland” tells the story of two remarkable men from two parts of the world who dedicated their lives to altering the fate of the tiger.

Despite this project being his first documentary on animals, Kauffman knew he wanted to tell the story in a way that highlights the passion of people for tigers.

“I’ve never done a film about animals or nature before. I often do films that take me to different places like the brothels of Calcutta or the war in Syria and Libya. So I’ve never done a film about nature and about animals,” Kauffman said in a phone interview with INQUIRER.net on Friday.

Kauffman shared that television network Discovery Channel and film production company Radical Media reached out to him about the idea of creating a film about tigers.

“At first, I didn’t understand why they asked me because I’ve never done a film about tigers before,” he said. “But I started to think about it. And I started to think about the idea that I didn’t wanna make a nature film, a typical nature film.”

While these kinds of movies shed light on animal extinction, Kauffman shared he preferred pointing out the man’s reverence for the tiger.

“I didn’t wanna make a film that solely concentrated on the destruction and death of an animal like some of the movies out there. And some of those movies are really amazing, they’re very good. They’ve really brought life to many different issues of animals going extinct,” he said.

He cited films like Louie Psihoyos’s “The Cove” (2009) and Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani’s “The Ivory Game” (2016).

“I came away and thought of an idea, my idea was what if we make a film not necessarily about the destruction of the tiger, but a film about the beauty and the majesty, and man’s reverence for the tiger over thousands of years,” Kauffman said.

“So for me it was all about finding people whose passion was saving the tiger,” he added.

In the documentary, Kauffman follows the work of Pavel Fomenko and Amit Sankhala with tigers in Russia and India, respectively.

The documentary premieres on March 31 at 9:55 p.m. on Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. /kga