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Pangolin: Kulu’s Journey, now streaming on Netflix, was recently honored with the 2025 Jackson Wild Media Award for Conservation Long-Form for its powerful storytelling and impact. The film’s intimate cinematography and urgent conservation message immerse viewers in the mysterious and captivating world of pangolins. The small, scaly mammals found in Asia and Africa may look unassuming, but they’re among the most poached and trafficked animals on the planet. Academy Award–winning director Pippa Ehrlich tells the story of one pangolin rescued from illegal trade, as the film follows wildlife photographer and cinematographer Gareth Thomas on his mission to rehabilitate the vulnerable animal and prepare it for a life of freedom in the wild.
Back in 2022, Thomas was a conservation volunteer and took part in a sting operation that rescued the pangolin that came to be known as Kulu. He explains that after rescue, the pangolins need an intensive care process at the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital which requires that they be walked every day.
“Because Temminck’s pangolins don't eat so well in captivity you have to take it out into the wilderness and let it forage for its own food. I was pretty much out with pangolins from two to eight hours every day and since I was spending so much time with them and building these relationships I started noticing all this unseen and unusual behavior. I began to film it just for documentation purposes. That's where it started.”
With wildlife cinematographer Steven Dover, Thomas put together a five-minute teaser from footage shot over two years with the objective to pitch it to producers and get a longer form film made. “At the top of our list was Pippa,” he says.
This was in 2021 when Ehrlich, a fellow South African, was a director in demand following the global acclaim of My Octopus Teacher, which highlighted human interaction with a wild animal.
“I was getting a lot of emails from people about films they wanted me to make and I was looking at a lot of teasers,” she recalls. “When I saw Gareth’s teaser, there was a lot about sting operations and trafficking that I felt I’d seen before, but then I looked at the footage of the pangolins themselves and it was just absolutely beautiful and intimate. It was the first time I'd seen these creatures in a way where I actually got a sense of what they are as beings.”
She adds, “I realized that these guys really knew how to capture the essence of what a pangolin is. I spoke to Nick Shumaker [producer at Anonymous Content] and he was also really excited when he saw the footage, that here was a story here worth pursuing.”
While Thomas and Dover continued gathering material, Ehrlich and Anonymous Content secured the commission from Netflix.
“It was Steve who encouraged me to call RED,” Thomas says. “I was still shooting on my Canon EOS R5 but Steve was a very experienced wildlife cinematographer. He knew that we had to shoot on RED no matter what. I made a call to RED and told them we were shooting this film and that we'd love to be able to amplify it.
“It meant that for the final 18 months of production we were hyper-focused on shooting real Blue Chip natural history, incredibly beautiful material, not just of the pangolin but all the other wildlife in the film.”
The biggest advantage of the camera for the filmmakers on this project was V-RAPTOR’s Super 35 sensor for macro photography. “The S35 sensor gave us the ability to crop into the frame so that we could get even closer without always having to put doublers on the end of macro lenses,” Thomas says. “That was the big selling point for the S35.”
The filmmakers shot 8K macro knowing they could crop to 4K in post for delivery. “That gave us an incredible amount of zoom on the macros which was extremely helpful. It's nice being able to have a big frame shooting macro, but when you're seeing it on a smaller screen you're losing a lot of the detail so you want to be able to zoom in as much as possible.”
Much of the activity of the teeming insect world shown in the film as well as the flicking action of the pangolin’s long tongue eating ants happens so fast they shot V-RAPTOR at 240 frames per second in 4K.
“This was incredibly valuable just to slow the action down to something that the human eye can register,” he relays.
Aside from the macro Canon RF 100mm they packed RF 24-105mm and RF70-200 zooms and a 50mm Sumire Prime. “The biggest focus when filming pangolin is to have the most minimal rig possible. I don't even like shooting with a matte box on. It's pretty much just the brain screen and the lens and the top handle. You've got to be mobile the whole time because you're running through the bush.
“You also want to be as close to the ground as possible. It's not a case of putting it on a tripod. To get down to an ant’s level we’d often improvise and steady the RED on bean bags.”
Ehrlich and Thomas began the project with another pangolin in mind. Then they met Kulu.
“I went to visit Gareth at the Wildlife Hospital and while we were there met this absolutely traumatized, hyperactive, inconsolable little animal,” she explains. “He was originally called Gijima (which means ‘to run’ in Zulu). He was the smallest pangolin in the ward and impossible to manage.
“So, I was surprised when Gareth called me up two months later and told me he was taking that ‘crazy little pangolin’ up to Lapalala. I told him to film everything because who knew what was going to happen? The story evolved from there. We were able to get such incredible material of Kulu because Gareth was there for the entire process but also because we had such incredible access at Lapalala Wilderness Reserve. To have that kind of freedom to move around in the bush just makes everything so much more practical.”
Lapalala Wilderness is a 48,000-hectare reserve, a four-hour drive from Johannesburg, where Thomas guided the young creature (now nicknamed Kulu which means ‘easy’ in Zulu) on the next stage of its rehabilitation. The film crew including associate producer Corné van Niekerk secured filming permits and coordinated with the on-site anti-poaching unit to ensure safety for the pangolins and those transporting Kulu.
“It’s a Big Five reserve meaning there are big cat predators, elephants and rhino wandering wild,” he says. “You can't go walking out 10 kilometers in the middle of the night. The entire principle is to carry as minimal gear as possible and make walking through the environment as easy as possible.”
At the end of the film, Kulu is successfully released into the wild and an onscreen title informs us that it is unlikely a human will ever see him again. In the film, you can see Thomas almost tear-up at the thought that this day would come.
“Pangolins are very individual and they are natural loners,” he says. “So, all the ones being rehabilitated get to that point where they want to be wild. Kulu wanted to be wild before I could allow him to be wild! So that was always his ultimate goal and mine too. There's no sense of sadness on my part. Of course, I miss the little guy. He was my best friend for a year and a half and my guide into the wilderness but there's no part of me that is left wanting. It’s just happiness.”
The film was graded by Colorist Greg Fisher at Company 3 in London and produced with the help of the African Pangolin Working Group (APWG), of which Thomas is an ambassador.
The hope is that Pangolin: Kulu’s Journey will bring a new level of public awareness that has the potential to change the outcome for these unique animals.
A special thanks to Pippa Ehrlich and Gareth Thomas for capturing a rarely seen world with intimacy and precision, and for sharing a story that quietly underscores what’s at stake—and what’s still possible—for one of the planet’s most endangered species.
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