Natural rights, resiliencies and cultural ecology

Poacher's Moon

by David Jaclin & Jérémie Brugidou, 2018 (in Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa)

Canada | 59 min | English, Afrikaans with French subtitles

Named for the nearly full moon that is the bane of anti-poaching patrols in southern Africa, Poacher’s Moon explores the intertwined worlds of wildlife, poaching and big-game hunting. Along a multispecies and multimodal approach, the filmmakers ask, ethnographically, about current human-animal relationships and their managerial turn in southern Africa. The film is a production of the HumAnimaLab (HAL), a research platform at UOttawa interested in contemporary multispecies, multisites and multimodal anthropological engagements.

Q&A with two members of the production crew

FIFEQ’s review

David Jaclin and Jérémie Bruguidou transport us to this almost supernatural fauna by the means of a magnificent and most successful contemplative ethnography. A majestic, almost dreamlike photography allows us to approach cultural and economic practices related to poaching in Africa from a new perspective. Here, the viewer is not led into taking sides on the ethical dimension of this practice, but rather to question the interhuman and human-animal relations that result from it, and the existence of an animal right: if it exists, who holds it?