’s wildlife-crime documentary feature “Tigre Gente” in Latin America, where the film will premiere on April 22 as part of the channel’s Earth Day lineup. Limonero Films has acquired the film for distribution outside Latin America. “Tigre Gente,” which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2021, is produced by Unger alongside, who won an Oscar for “The White Helmets,” and was Oscar nominated for “The Edge of Democracy” and “Virunga.
She adds: “We can do better, and we should do better, to understand the other side. It will only be then that we can drive real impact and stop the illegal wildlife trade industry together.” At the heart of the documentary are two major protagonists. The first is Marcos Uzquiano, a ranger, and the director of Madidi National Park in Bolivia. A Bolivian government staffer had recommended that Unger contact Uzquiano while she was doing research and development in Bolivia in 2015. She then set up a Zoom interview with him when she was back in the U.S.
“I had seen her speak at an event in Washington D.C. at NatGeo headquarters, and I was just blown away. I was just so impressed by Laurel, and I approached her, eventually, and was like: ‘I’m working on this story about wildlife trafficking – on this new trade in jaguar body parts for the Chinese black market.
“And you can’t do that by only concentrating on the trade, you have to dig deeper into the communities. And luckily, you know, we have a really global team that made this film. And so we felt that with our strength as a team, we could carry off digging into the community aspects in Bolivia, and in Hong Kong and China, in order to better understand our characters, what drives them, and that would make an audience care about the issue more as well.