For The Wild

This is a film for the baboons.

A local story that speaks to a global crisis. As our cities and villages continue to grow, wilderness is becoming smaller and wildlife is being pushed into increasingly limited spaces.

On the Cape Peninsula, this tension has reached a critical point. Wild baboon troops that have lived here for generations are now facing a future behind fences.

The Cape Peninsula baboons live on one of the most dramatic edges between wilderness and human development in the world.

As their habitat becomes increasingly fragmented, conflict with people has grown. Homes are raided, communities are frustrated and authorities face the difficult task of managing intelligent wild animals inside an expanding city.

Now, some troops face being permanently enclosed.

Through scientists, conservationists, Indigenous voices, spiritual leaders, activists, residents and those responsible for managing the baboons, the film explores how we arrived here and what might happen next.

At its heart, this is not only a film about baboons. It is about our relationship with nature.

Meeting them on their own terms

Before we speak about conflict, we want to meet the baboons on their own terms: their family structures, intelligence, relationships and the way they move through the mountains, fynbos and coastline.

They are not simply animals entering human spaces. They are part of this landscape and have been for generations.

Understanding who they are is essential to understanding what might be lost.

Cape Town expanded. Roads, housing, gardens and food sources pushed further into baboon habitat. At the same time, baboons learned to navigate an increasingly human landscape.

Through science and history, the film will look at how management has evolved and why decades of intervention have brought us to this moment.

The story is as much about changing human behaviour as it is about changing baboon behaviour.

Homes are entered, food is taken, people become afraid and communities grow frustrated. Those tasked with managing the animals face difficult decisions every day. The film will make space for these realities.

We do not want to romanticise coexistence. The challenge is real.

Any meaningful conversation about the future of the baboons has to acknowledge that.

For some

It offers safety, control and a practical response to a problem that has become increasingly difficult to manage.

For others

It represents the permanent removal of wild animals from the landscape they belong to.

With the land

Through Indigenous and ancestral perspectives, we will explore a much older relationship between people, animals and the Cape landscape.

Before suburbs, fences and property lines, humans and wildlife shared this land very differently.

Nature does not exist around us. We are part of it.

Voices & chants

Chants and spoken word from Chief Kingsley as part of the film’s sonic identity.

Cinematic score

Original music that holds the emotional arc of the story.

The Peninsula

Baboon calls, wind, ocean and birds.

Human life

The sounds of the city pushing into the landscape.