Rugari and his family live on the border of the Serengeti, next to a pride of lions. During the dry season hungry lions threaten their village, and Rugari is faced with a terrible decision. Livestock is his family’s only income, and he could protect them by poisoning the lions. But if he’s caught he will be sent to jail. His daughter Nyange insists that there must be another way. Shot on location in Tanzania with a local team and director, this film is a nuanced telling of what it means to live with lions.

In Canary, witness the extraordinary life of Dr. Lonnie Thompson, an explorer who went where no scientist had gone before and transformed our idea of what is possible. Daring to seek Earth’s history contained in glaciers atop the tallest mountains in the world, Lonnie found himself on the frontlines of climate change—his life’s work evolving into a salvage mission to recover these priceless historical records before they disappear forever.

My Mercury follows Yves Chesselet, a 28-year-old conservationist who leaves behind the pleasures and comforts of modern life to live on a remote island with only birds for company. Mercury Island, becomes the center of Yves’ world as he makes a cruel pact with nature to wrest 15,000 seals off the island and return it to the critically endangered seabirds of the South Atlantic.

The moral dilemma that ensues is told through diaries, archive and contemporary and past footage shot on the island. Yves’ sister Joëlle tells a multi-layered story, part environmental, part epic tale of one man’s struggle to reverse a nature distorted by human greed. Private diaries Yves kept whilst on the island and 25 hours of his own video diaries, recorded by his closest confidante and soul mate, ‘Vid’, along with the rare birds of Mercury kept him company for the eight years he lived there provide a unique insight to his journey. Ultimately it was a victory for the birds – but at what cost?

If the name Sofía M. Villalpando sounds familiar, that’s probably because it is! Sofía’s been a longstanding member of the Jackson Wild community, starting in 2018 as a SMASH Fellow. She then returned to Jackson Wild in 2021 as a Media Lab Fellow. In 2023, she was one of nine filmmakers in the Jackson Wild and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (SDZWA) Latinx Film Lab.