The Elephant Whisperers bags India’s first Oscars for the documentary short film.

“1.4 billion Indians, this is for you….” said Gunnet Monga in her winning speech after The Elephant Whisperers won the Oscar for the best documentary short film. Directed and produced by the women duo Kartiki Gosalves & Guneet, the movie is not only a victory for the nation, it is a gift and inspiration to all women filmmakers.

Kartiki the director and cinematographer, gave thanks and gave a shout-out to the heroes of her story - Bomman and Bellie who gave their lives to the forests.

Image Courtesy: Timothy A. Gonsalves.
Image Source: Wikipedia Commons

It had to be a woman to see the mother-like emotional bond between two humans and two baby elephants. As they say, whatever you focus on expands, when Kartiki decided to focus on the love bond that existed between the animals and humans and brought it alive so beautifully and realistically, the whole world watched and fell in love with that glory.

Bomman and Bellie would have never imagined that their lives would ever impact anyone except Raghu and Ammu. This is the strength of the story itself and the proof of the powerful storytelling and filmmaking.

Image Courtesy: Timothy A. Gonsalves.
Image Source: Wikipedia Creative Commons

When Raghu, the orphaned baby elephant, is injured and separated from his herd, his own family,  Bomman and Bellie adopt him and devote their lives to taking care of him singlemindedly.

Bonding gets deeper and the three make a beautiful family together. How the elephant babies communicate, hug, play, and demand food from their caretakers is heartwarming and reveals the emotional intelligence of the elephants.

Image Source: Guneet Monga Instagram

When the Raghu boy is grown up, It’s time for him to leave. It’s heartbreaking for Booman and Bellie to say bye to Raghu, their baby, as the state's forest department takes him away. The reaction of both the human and the animal to their separation is heart-rending.

The single-minded purpose of rearing one elephant may have looked insignificant. But then it caught the eyes of a woman. She thought it was a story worth telling. She sent the reels to several producers and when Guneet saw those, she was convicted, and boom...Rest was history.

Image Source: Guneet Monga Instagram

When this story of the undaunting selfless devotion of an ordinary man and a woman to nature was brought out of the forest by a storyteller, it became an extraordinary story creating history and reason for the victory of so many people. The Oscar victory of 2 Indian women, director Kartiki Gonsalves and Producer Guneet Monga; the victory of the whole Kattunayakan community, a tribal group, in Tamil Nadu; the victory of a woman supporting another woman - the producer Guneet Monga, who saw the value in the uncelebrated lives of 2 forest caretakers; the victory of the nation; the victory of the crusaders for wildlife conservation..and endlessly more.

This Oscar 23 feat is the story of the power of single-minded devotion to one’s life’s purpose. Sometimes it may take years, and then a blink of an eye…to become an immortal story.

“The Elephant Whisperers” had to compete with “Haulout”, “How Do You Measure a Year?”, “The Martha Mitchell Effect” and Malala Yousafzai’s “Stranger at the Gate” to clinch the award.