125 years ago Rudyard Kipling, an Englishman born in India, wrote a collection of short stories that have lived on through the generations. This was “The Jungle Book”. The stories tell of a young boy raised by wolves. In the forest of his imagination Kipling included all of India’s charismatic animals: a tiger prowls, a legendary black panther passes on his wisdom to the man-cub Mowgli, elephants and langurs mix with bears and wolves. Kipling created an imaginary ‘law of the jungle’ that all animals must obey, or die. In essence: the survival of the fittest. His characters: Akela the wolf, Shere Khan the tiger, Baloo the bear, Hati the elephant, the monkeys of the Bandar Log and Bagheera the black panther have been brought to the big screen twice through the magic of animation. In 2018 the fable receives yet another Hollywood makeover. But there are facts behind the fiction. In India there are still wolves hunting in the arid flatlands, tigers prowling the diminishing forests, elephants treading hereditary trails passed down through generations, pythons lying in wait, black panthers stalking their prey. And they are all in thrall to the great passage of the seasons, especially the annual Monsoon. Filming entirely on location in India, we follow the daily and seasonal struggles of the living characters Kipling described, as all obey the unwritten law of the jungle, and strive to raise a new generation. Secret India - the REAL Jungle Book: the truth beyond the fiction.
Production: ORF, dreiD.at
Director Jeremy Hogarth
Title Animation: Stefan Pausch, Simon Wendler