“Last Days,” a powerful short film by Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow, acclaimed screenwriter Scott Z. Burns and Annapurna Pictures (and distributed in partnership with WildAid) gets its wider public release on December 9 with an appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
The film tells the story of how buying even a small ivory trinket contributes not just to the killing of Africa’s elephants but also the funding of militant and terrorist organizations.
Last Days is also available online in conjunction with the launch of LASTDAYSOFIVORY.COM. The film and website aim to put the illegal ivory trade and militant groups profiting from it out of business, in order to protect endangered elephants and innocent people. The Academy Award-winning director states: “An elephant disappears every 15 minutes. It is our hope that this film helps to bring an activist into existence at least that often.”
Bigelow says: “Last year I was made aware of the very real connection between elephant poaching and terrorism. For me it represented the diabolical intersection of two problems that are of great concern – species extinction and global terrorism. Both involve the loss of innocent life, and both require urgent action. To make a feature film about such a topic would likely take years during which more elephants would die, so instead I approached a team of fellow filmmakers and we made LAST DAYS as an animated piece, which we thought would give it a broader audience (besides, the internet is filled with graphic images of slaughtered elephants and yet the killing continues.) There are real things we can all do to stop wild elephants from disappearing from our world while cutting off funding for some of the world’s most notorious terrorist networks.”
Kathryn Bigelow’s three-minute film, made in collaboration with concept designer Samuel Michlap, head of layout Lorenzo Martinez and Duncan Studio, takes the viewer, in reverse chronology, through every step in the blood-curdling process, and, at its most disturbing, identifies the sale of ivory as a funding source for terrorist organizations like Boko Haram, the Lord’s Resistance Army and al-Shabab.
It is being distributed globally in partnership with WildAid, which focuses on reducing demand for endangered species products, and was produced by Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures.
More information about the cause and how to take action can be found at WWW.LASTDAYSOFIVORY.COM.
