Director
Shaul Schwarz
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Film Details
Runtime: 108 minutes
Format: Short film
Africa's endangered species is big business. Heavily armed, American tourists on safari dream to shoot a lion, an elephant or one of the other 'big five', as idealistic environmentalists trying to protect. But the reality is incredibly more complex, is an unpleasant truth that the hardy 'Trophy' reveals a unique journalistic overview. Right from the first scene you have to repeatedly revise one's own view of both big game hunting and patchy human morality. For it is indeed true when South African John Hume claims that he saves his rhinos from poachers by themselves to save their horns? Or when the tearful hunter Phillip Glass says he feels spiritually connected with the animals he kills? The scenes from an arms fair for safari tourists in Las Vegas'll get one's political mind to a boil, but not even here is really as simple as it tries to look like. Instructors Shaul Schwarz ( 'Narco Cultura') and Christina Clusiau has created a film that is much larger than his subject. And it's told, so you sit right on the edge of the chair.
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Reviews
Schwarz and Clusiau also come across as glib storytellers, cutting impatiently between several different stories and presenting them in bite-size chunks, as in a TV news broadcast.
Trophy should be mandatory viewing in spite of its narrative presentation.
The film gives voice to the commercial case for breeding and hunting, which feels at odds with the emotive way these kills are positioned.
If 'Blue Planet II' is a bit too touchy-feely for you, this hard-hitting doc should do the trick.
A powerful film, but also sometimes very tough to watch.
Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau's disturbing documentary digs into the murk of the African big-game trade with candour and even-handedness.
It's a film to raise your blood pressure.
Trophy doesn't tell you which side to pick; it's content to show you what they are.
To its credit, "Trophy" neither shames its subjects nor offers an easy solution.
Trophy presents the very definition of making a deal with the devil.
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