Our Burning Planet

Q&A — My Octopus Teacher director on her new documentary, Pangolin: Kulu’s journey

Gareth had to slowly earn the trust of Kulu, who evolved into a headstrong, confident and determined pangolin. (Photo: Corné van Niekerk)

By Helen Walne

21 Apr 2025

New Netflix documentary tells the story of a pangolin pup rescued from illegal trafficking, and follows its journey from baby to adulthood.

Q: Pangolins are rarely seen, and it feels like we don’t know much about them. So, how did you land on this story amid the many other, more visible, ones?

Pippa Ehrlich: A frightening number of pangolins are being poached every year and a small portion of the lucky ones are being rescued. There are incredible people all over the world doing that work. We tried to show in the film how it takes complete and utter dedication and love to care for pangolins. Some films just seem to have their own flow and consciousness, and everything with this project somehow fell into place — like the story wanted to be told. Gareth (Thomas) and his team sought me out. It wasn’t long after My Octopus Teacher, and I wasn’t taking on any new projects. And this guy kept emailing me, saying things like “I promise I won’t make waste your time. Just give me five minutes.” He never gave up! And, eventually, I clicked on a link to a reel he sent me, and I was treated to six minutes of unbelievable pangolin footage that Gareth and his friend, cinematographer Steve Dover, had taken.

There was just something in the footage. I could see it had been so sensitively captured, and it was just so beautiful. It had depth and intimacy. And I showed it to a couple of people I work with in the UK and in the States, and everybody was enchanted.

Little Kulu sleeps bundled up in a towel in Gareth's cottage. (Photo: Gareth Thomas)

Q: The film unfolds as though it’s a live feed. Was this something you were aiming for?

A: It actually wasn’t what we had planned. We were going to do a more retrospective story with another pangolin that had already been rewilded. That story would have been more Joburg focused. But then we met Kulu, and he was such a character, and there was this incredible opportunity to follow his process from baby to adult and be in the bush with him every step of the way. It was a risk because we had no plan B and it’s impossible to know whether the rehabilitation process will be successful.

Q: How long did it take to make the film from beginning to end?

A: So, I guess it depends on who you ask. Gareth, Steven and Corné (van Niekerk) had been filming since long before Covid. I met Gareth in about March 2022, and we were in production for two-and-a-half years, which is actually incredibly fast. This is by far the fastest film I’ve ever made. The story was so contained— it’s a blessing to have a natural timeline like that, with an authentic story arc. It’s not always like that. We knew we needed Kulu to be released in order to wrap up the film. So we followed his lead.

Q: How has working with the Sea Change Project influenced your career?

A: I think there is something in the blueprint of Sea Change and how we think and how we tell stories. From the beginning, we’ve used the term “emotional ecology”. It’s this idea that you have these incredibly complex webs of life that we’re all part of. And while we’re part of those things on a kind of practical, material level, there’s also an emotional system that’s flowing through there. We really danced with that, with My Octopus Teacher and the same with Kulu and Gareth’s story, because they are both very emotional narratives that contain universal themes most humans can relate to.

There is also something in the philosophy of curiosity that my work with Sea Change has really fostered. I’ve learnt from Craig and Jannes to really go deep into the nuts and bolts of the natural world, and if you look at the ant sequences and Caswell’s insights, there’s the science and even the tracking aspects of Sea Change thinking. And then the other side of it is this emotional storytelling where you look for universal themes.

Gareth was with Kulu every step of the way, transitioning him from dependency to full wildness. (Photo: Supplied)

Q: The ants get a starring role in the film. How did you translate their lives to film?

A: Craig (Foster) came with me on our first shoot in Joburg and he became immediately captivated by the ants, so we started really paying attention to them. Every single one has a story. They’re fully fledged beings and have different personalities, and they (and termites) are a pangolin’s only prey. Actually, this was something Gareth and I spoke about a lot. We wanted the viewer to feel like they were inside Kulu’s world and get a taste of the things that are important to him. So we did a lot of macro shots. A lot of my diving and filming with Sea Change has been with special compact cameras, with incredible macro capabilities. So, I think my mind is kind of primed to think about things happening at that tiny scale.

Q: And the world of ants is so dramatic, right?

A: Yeah. It’s crazy how they work together and how they strive. There’s such intelligence, and I think the film really highlights that. We could have made a whole film about ants! Caswell can tell you how they dance to communicate, how chemical signals are passed from ant to ant, and how the queen and the ants work in a system. Each type of ant is also so different. The Savannah spiny sugar ants are these sweet, velvety, bulbous, smiley little ants that only eat nectar. Pugnacious ants are super aggressive. And the poor termites are blind and desperately trying to survive and close up their tunnels before a full-scale invasion.

Q: When we think of pangolins, our minds might go to armadillos? Are they related?

A: No, not at all. They’re a unique family. Pangolins are covered in scales while armadillos are covered in leather. Pangolins belong to the Pholidota order and armadillos to Cingulata. They’re so different — armadillos eat meat and will drag a lamb off into the dark and eat its entrails while it’s still alive. Pangolins are so, so gentle. Apart from an incredibly strong core and their armour-like scales, they are totally defenceless and non-aggressive. Which is part of the reason they are the world’s most trafficked wild mammal. Disturbingly, the most trafficked mammal is humans — we don’t often think about that.

Q: Nature documentaries often anthropomorphise animals as a tool to connect with viewers. What are your thoughts on this?

A: I find anthropomorphism to be quite a confusing term. Partly because the more I learn about animals and the more I spend time with them, the more I’m kind of realising that they really aren’t that different to us. As humans, we put ourselves up on this pedestal as these rational creatures with some kind of higher power. But if you speak to any neuropsychologist or behavioural specialist, they will tell you that 97% of our behaviour and thinking and decision-making comes down to our emotions and our instincts. And animals are very much the same. It’s the blueprint of our psyches: millions of years ago, we were all the same thing.

Despite their armour-like scales, pangolins are defenceless and non-aggressive. (Photo: Supplied)

If you look at how animals behave: they protect their young, they mate, some of them are incredibly social, and many are loyal to each other. And they definitely have favourite foods and favourite people. Some pangolins we met would come bounding up to you and wrap themselves around your leg and stick their tongue into your ear. But Kulu wasn’t like that. He was a very self-contained little pangolin. He wanted to be free and independent. I definitely related to that — some might describe that as anthropomorphism, but for me it’s just the reality of who he is as an individual pangolin.

Teaching Kulu to hunt in the wild required patience and daily forays to ant colonies in Lapalala. (Photo: Gareth Thomas)

Q: The cinematography is a wonderful mix of restraint and emotion, which gives the film a special quality. How was this achieved?

A: We worked hard as a team, and I may have been a bit of a hard taskmaster! And we had different cinematographers focusing on specific things. Gareth, Steve and Corné were our pangolin/natural history team. I think a huge reason for the beautiful pangolin imagery is Gareth’s connection to the animal. He just figured out how to film them. He and Steve had worked together for a long time, and Steve is such an experienced wildlife cinematographer. They conceptualise things together. And if you love something, it translates into the art that you create.

The whole team was amazing. Everyone added their magic. We had Grant Appleton, who’s an amazingly experienced drone photographer capturing aerials. And then Warren Smart, who is my regular director of photography, capturing Gareth’s process along with the other contributors and shooting interviews. Warren and I have worked together on many films, including My Octopus Teacher, and at this point we can communicate by just looking at each other. We have an incredible shorthand. From the very first time Craig and I met him, we just knew there was something super special about him. He creates images with such feeling.

We also had amazing access to Lapalala Wilderness Reserve. They basically just said film wherever you like, whenever you like, for as long as you like. This gave us the space to push things. I could continue to send the natural-history team back and back and back to get to the shot we were looking for.

Q: You chose to not focus too much on the poaching side of the story. Why was that?

A: So, there are a few reasons. I worked in the shark conservation world and I’d really burn myself out on stories about shark finning and the global trade. And it got to a point where I was putting so much negative imagery and information out into the world and I realised that everyone is just absolutely fatigued. So, when it came to pangolins, I wanted to connect

people with the animals, because how can we expect anyone to care about the fact that they’re being trafficked when no one even knows what they are? So that was the first thing.

Then, poaching is a very nuanced thing that needs to be unpacked with a lot of time and sensitivity, and I realised very quickly that if I went down that road, I wasn’t going to be able to do the pangolins themselves justice. There has been a great deal of injustice and exploitation of human beings in Africa, and what you have to realise is that sometimes the poachers are kind of cold-blooded and greedy, but often it’s just someone who’s desperately trying to feed their family.

And then you’d also have to go into the Chinese medicine side, which is very complex. Fifty or 60 years ago, when you went to a Chinese doctor, they would’ve made up a medicine for you while you were there. And it would’ve been very, very specific to whatever ailment you had and might contain a small amount of pangolin scale. But what’s happened as the world has modernised and populations have grown is that Chinese medicines have had to become standardised and industrialised so they can be shipped all over the world. Therefore, the demand for these wildlife products has become industrialised as well — and that is what’s wiping pangolins off the face of the earth.

There’s now a movement away from wildlife products, and many Chinese medicine practitioners are advocating for other products that can be used to replace wildlife parts. But this is a medical system that has existed for thousands of years and there has to be some kind of balance between respecting ancient cultures and asking those cultures to evolve because the natural world is under ever-increasing pressure.

Q: The soundtrack is such a beautiful melding of classical strings and traditional African instruments. What was behind that process?

A: Often in the early phases of making a film, you listen to as much music as you can to get a feel for what would work for various scenes. It took a while for that voice to start coming through, but while we were recording the podcast Back to the Water, I went to a rehearsal with Zolani (Mahola) and The Feminine Force and they played Halala, which means “celebration” in isiXhosa. And I heard that song and I thought “Oh, wow. This is the coming of the rain; this is the feeling of the powerful and joyful pangolin playing in the thunderstorm.” So that was a starting point for me. I was really excited when Zolani, Sky and the band said they were interested in contributing to the score, and our composer, Anne Nikitin, was completely open to working with more traditional and African instruments. It was a challenge combining the two styles. But when I was at the London recording, with all these strings and harps and traditional instruments, I cried because it was just so powerful.

'We worked hard as a team, and I may have been a bit of a hard taskmaster!' Pippa in the field with cinematographers Corné van Niekerk (left) and Steven Dover (right).
(Photo: Supplied)

Q: Has your approach to filmmaking changed since My Octopus Teacher?

A: It’s evolved, but I wouldn’t say it’s changed. My Octopus Teacher was almost as much my story as it was Craig’s. I was also diving every day, usually with Craig, so you get deep inside the thing you’re trying to express. It’s wonderful, but you also get lost. It’s like painting a picture, and you go deeper and deeper and deeper and then step back and you’re like, “Uh-oh”. You get into the weeds. With Pangolin, there was more distance, which made some aspects of the storytelling easier, but I had to rely a lot on Gareth as my window into Kulu’s world. I’m also just so much more experienced and have built a very solid team around me, so I’m able to rely on those things more.

Q: The film touches on electric game fencing and how pangolins are vulnerable to them. Can you talk a bit about this?

A: South Africa has a vast network of national parks and private reserves, and those reserves have thousands of kilometres of electrified game fencing. This is necessary because we have rural areas where people are living — and have lived forever — and we need to protect them from elephants and lions and other animals that could harm them. We also need to protect the animals from people.

At the same time, however, we need to look at that bottom strand, which is a legal requirement in South Africa. There is anecdotal evidence that there’s a way of modifying it so that pangolins and other small animals aren’t harmed, but there is nothing scientific to prove it. And that’s the work that Gareth and Ray will be doing at Lapalala, so we can put together a scientific case study that can be used to motivate for a change in policy.

Gareth had to slowly earn the trust of Kulu, who evolved into a headstrong, confident and determined pangolin. (Photo: Corné van Niekerk)

Q: What is your hope for Pangolin? What do you hope to achieve?

A: I think the first thing is just to create a massive wave of pangolin love across the planet. And an awareness that they even exist and that they’re in very, very dire straits. We’re at the point where if there’s not a shift, we could lose them.

I got a wonderful email from a vet in Malaysia who’s been working with pangolins for a long time. And she just said, thank you for restoring the dignity of these creatures, which I love so much. And I think there is huge danger in how we depict animals as victims. Because rhinos are not just victims of poaching. Sharks are not just victims of shark finning. All of these creatures have whole worlds and are deeply complex and beautiful and fascinating. And they deserve respect and love for what they are as beings and the place they hold on planet Earth, as well as compassion because of the devastating things we are doing to them. DM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REeWvTRUpMk

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