Tigre Gente | Storyteller

[NOTE: Tigre Gente available until July 29, 2024.]

Interview with Elizabeth Unger, Director of “Tigre Gente”

What inspired you to create a documentary about the jaguar trade?

In 2009, while working towards a Biology degree, I spent a memorable summer rehabilitating animal victims of the illegal wildlife trade in Bolivia. Working with those animals had a major impact on me and, throughout the years that followed, I held onto the idea of telling a larger narrative about wildlife trafficking in South America. These thoughts eventually came to fruition in 2015, when I heard about the new trade of jaguar parts for the Chinese black market that was sweeping the jungles of Bolivia. I quickly realized this issue wasn’t being widely discussed; it was solely circulating in domestic Bolivian news agencies at the time. Over the next couple of years I tried to raise the alarm as best as I could, knocking on the doors of international NGOs in hopes that they would address this new criminal jaguar trade as a critical issue. It’s estimated there are only between 64,000 to 170,000 jaguars left in the world; a fraction of their previous population numbers. Habitat loss, human-wildlife conflict, and local pet and skin markets already threaten the livelihood of jaguars throughout Latin America. However, China’s new black market demand for tiger tooth substitutes could be the factor that denigrates jaguar populations to a serious degree very quickly.

It takes a lot to tell a good story about traditional practices, and provide deeper understanding without promoting negative stereotypes. How did you toe these lines?

My vision was to create a jaguar trafficking documentary with a stylistically softer tone — one that felt different from the array of run-and-gun wildlife crime docs, all helmed by male directors, that I had watched over the last decade. I wanted to break away from the status quo and show the visceral, character-driven world I was witnessing, so that the audience could connect with the protagonists as much as the plot itself. This idea deepened over time, and the film evolved from a standard expose on jaguar trafficking to a more intimate, nuanced portrait of our protagonists and of the dreams and fears that were driving them. Our team further gravitated away from the ‘who’ and ‘how’ of this new jaguar trade and instead started focusing on the ‘why’. As we dove into the deeper cultural questions that followed, we expanded our team to better represent the South American and Chinese communities featured in the film itself.

We hope we have broken new ground with this film — not only by exposing the underbelly of the jaguar trade —but by exploring the root cause of the mentality that’s driving the demand. Our team’s hope is that Tigre Gente will help battle misconceptions and give Western the audience a better comprehension of Chinese culture and tradition as it pertains to wildlife consumerism. The reality is simple: We can do better, and we should do better, to understand the other side. It will only be then that we can drive real impact and stop the illegal wildlife trade industry together.

Have there been any immediate impacts or changes following the release of your documentary?

Last year, National Geographic Channel broadcast Tigre Gente to millions of people across Latin America. At the same time, our team launched our film website and impact campaign. Our campaign is focused on dissuading Bolivians who hunt jaguars, as well as Chinese buyers in Bolivia who use parts for medicinal or spiritual reasons. We will be embarking on in-depth workshops with these communities to help curb both the supply and the demand of jaguar parts. Our team is also proud to announce an official partnership with the University of Oxford, which is conducting our impact campaign analysis. A final report detailing our campaign efficacy will be published in 2025.

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