Mozambique Gas & Energy Summit & Exhibition 2025
The ivory game documentary film
3:54 CAT | 28 February 2018
The ivory game documentary film
The Ivory Game is a 2016 American documentary film, directed by Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani. The film examines the ivory trade, which has become a global concern, pitting governments and environmental preservationalists against poachers and Chinese ivory merchants.
The Ivory Game had its world premiere on September 16, 2016 at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released to Netflix on November 4, 2016. The film received mostly positive reviews.
The documentary concerns the poaching of elephants in Africa, related to the ivory trade in China and Hong Kong, and the repercussions of elephant poaching if it is allowed to continue. Directors Keif Davidson and Richard Ladkani spent 16 months undercover along with their crew and several subjects investigating the killing of elephants for their tusks and the smuggling of ivory to China, where it is seen as a status symbol. While legal, there is a rampant black market where corrupt business practices and dealings occur. The film takes its viewers from Tanzania, Kenya, and Zambia to China, Hong Kong, and Vietnam, briefly stopping in London.
The film opens in Tanzania, Africa, where Elisifa Ngowi, the head of intelligence for the Task Force, along with his officers, are conducting a nighttime sting operation in an attempt to arrest Shetani, one of the most notorious poachers in the region. Shetani is responsible for the deaths of 10,000 elephants alone. While Ngowi is tracking Shetani and the poachers, Craig Millar, head of security at the Big Life Foundation in Kenya, is trying to stop poaching from happening in the first place. Millar’s team spend their days and nights protecting elephants on the vast savanna, scaring off poachers and preventing local residents from attacking elephants that have destroyed their food crops.
In China, Andrea Crosta, who is head of investigation for Wildleaks, a whistle-blowing site for “wildlife crime”, and Hongxiang Huang, an investigative journalist, go undercover to gather evidence of illegal importing and selling of ivory. China has become the world’s biggest market for ivory. The Chinese government releases 5 tons of ivory per year to licensed dealers, making it difficult to discern between legal and illegal ivory. Crosta and Huang, along with their hidden cameras, expose many dealers bragging about having much more ivory than their licenses allow and reveals the many loopholes in ivory regulations which have helped create an intense demand.
The documentary reports that if governments do not take action now or in the near future, elephants are facing extinction within the next 15 years.
Date and Time: Thursday, March 1 2018 from 18h00 to 20h00
Entrance: Free
Address: Centro Cultural Americano, Av. Mao Tsé Tung no. 542, Maputo
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