When Lambs Become Lions review: Elephant poachers given fair documentary trial

Here’s a documentary that asks us to view Kenyan elephant poachers as valuable human beings. It’s a hard watch — the protagonists do terrible things and one betrayal will leave you panting with shock — but, like all the best drama, it’s rooted in deep and tangled emotions. Director Jon Kasbe, 27, (raised in America by his Indian father and Australian mother) subverts Heart of Darkness clichés. Even the most ardent animal-rights campaigners will find it fascinating.​

Kasbe spent almost four years with his two protagonists. There’s smart, self-mythologising poacher, X, happy to spill the secrets of his trade and boast about his profits. Then there’s X’s cousin, Asan, a rancher trained by the government to kill poachers on sight, whose paychecks never arrive. 
Asan — woozily sad, deeply superstitious, financially imperilled — resembles the characters in Mati Diop’s Senegalese epic, Atlantics. And, as in Diop’s movie, fraught domestic life is integral to the bigger picture. Asan’s wife and children make a haunting impression, as does a family cat which, at one point, ecstatically chomps on a discarded testicle. 

The whole thing looks stunning, with night-time hunts and one-of-a-kind bonfires, and neatly conveys what’s at stake for Kenyans. True, shots of X and Asan smoking moodily become a bit tiresome and the twist ending feels confused (Sea of Shadows, an exposé of corruption in Mexico, offers a more complete analysis of how the global food chain screws both endangered species and Joe Schmoes). 

Fewer fags and more facts would have made When Lambs Become Lions perfect. Still, its non-preachy stance is a revelation.