Beverly Joubert, Dereck Joubert	...	(Director)
Dereck Joubert	...	(Writer)
Dereck Joubert	...	Cinematographer
JB Arthur	...	Original Music Composer

Comments: There is nothing like this in the world of Big Cat documentaries. It's a symphony of darkness that plays out like a Greek tragedy. There is no comeuppance tho, only a final confrontation which feels as unavoidable as it is unpredictable

... there is no violation here
no malice
just a set of ancient responses

JB Arthur's classical score is a little too standard classical when it's just passing time. When it speaks directly to the story it's scary, tearful, lovely, everything you want it to be

This film began the collaboration between Dereck Joubert and Jeremy Irons that exists to this day. Dereck is a squishy poet who's lived in a tent amongst the wildlife of the Botswana swamplands for thirty years. Jeremy is Jeremy. A pro. A match made in heaven

Big Cat docs are all about the dry season vs the wet season. During the former, prey comes to predator. In the latter, things get scattered. Everything comes down to where the water is

Africa comes at you from both sides
it is a golden ray of light and a dark
sloping shadow
it has the power to abandon pretenses
and the humor
to play with your body

In this story a group of lions break off from the main pride and become nomads. It starts in standard fashion when the dominant males exile the maturing boys. Lucky those boys that some of the girls go with them. The girls are the hunters and can use their feminine wiles should they stumble into territory owned by macho men

One morning a nomad lioness wakes up and notices some giant footprints in the parched and dusty mud:

the tracks of which gods are those walking beside me
are they from the fire or the flood
are they the ones who wait for me
and is this my map of blood
is this my destiny

Make of that what you will. The majority of the narration is of that ilk. Sometimes silly, sometimes insightful: standard poetry. Nothing else like it in the world of Big Cat docs

Sadly, this was filmed before the Joubert's cameras were up to HD snuff, and before thermal imaging or infrared cameras were available to them. But Dereck makes the best of it in two ways:

First, he doesn't make this a highlight reel of well lit HD captures of kills and dining. He brings us into the middle of the chaos, where real life is blurry. It's freaky how he gets some of the shots he gets. It's immersive, and works

Second, Dereck is primarily an Art Film Director. Since this was shot back in the "night" when film makers had to shine a work lamp on their targets that was bright enough to illuminate the animals but not bright enough to disturb or distract them, it works to Dereck's strength of using shadows and reflections, silhouettes and flares, shapes and closeups

Most of it is shot at night, dusk or dawn. So ... grey elephants and dirty cats playing in the mud. Not a healthy color palette. It's where the classical score, the wannabe poetry, and the blur of real life collide to form this Symphony of Darkness. There is nothing like it in the world of Big Cat Documentaries

when you meet me again
maybe you'll remember
that your wild eye
when open
travels inward


gentle the touch that wakens you from your dreams
softly the shape that steals the light
you are new now but the shadows will
dance within you

the tracks of which gods are those walking beside me
are they from the fire or the flood
are they the ones who wait for me
and is this my map of blood
is this my destiny

Summary: The harsh and unforgiving fight for survival on the savannahs of Africa is captured in spellbinding fashion. Featuring the spectacular, up-close photography by celebrated wildlife filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert, Ultimate Enemies documents rarely captured behaviour between Africa’s largest and fiercest adversaries, the elephant and the lion, when the rivals are driven together by their desperate need for water.

With the dry season upon them and water becoming a rapidly vanishing commodity on the parched savannahs of Botswana, these unlikely and uneasy neighbours are forced to share close quarters around a shrinking waterhole. Enduring close proximity that neither animal would normally tolerate, a territorial struggle erupts into a shocking and unexpected clash, with deadly results. In an extraordinarily bold move the lions begin to deliberately hunt and attack their mammoth foes.

Botswana’s Chobe National Park is the setting for this mesmerizing film, and the intense, raw beauty of the African savannahs, replete with wildlife of all kinds, is in abundant evidence. Through the use of day and night cinematography, the film crew captures moments of spectacular rivalry and tragic loss, such as when the lions attack herds of elephant calves in the cover of darkness.

Later in the struggle, captive to their thirst, the elephants risk everything to return to the water hole, only to be met by the skeletons of their dead. What follows is a solemn scene of an elephant holding the bone of the departed with his trunk. With moments like these, the filmmakers have brought us emotionally closer to these animals than ever before.

Will the lions continue their onslaught? Will the elephants return to the water hole and become victims of their ferocious enemies? With the cycle of life or death, nothing remains constant.