Short description:

Leopards: The Last Stand is a humungous and holistic effort documenting Leopards living in proximity of human habitations covering five states in different parts of India, examining population impact, rural urban divide, infrastructure creation, Govt. policies, agricultural policies, lack of awareness, culture and religious ethos.

India has the 7th largest landmass in the world and is also one of the top 10 mega biodiversity countries. It also has the second largest human population in the world which is soon going to overtake the population of China. This massive human population is increasingly placing massive anthropomorphic pressures on our natural world. In India the conservation efforts are largely focused on the apex predator – the tiger – and the other charismatic predator the leopard is ignored. Leopards can live in sparse vegetation and survive on smaller prey. Our ever-expanding human habitations are causing conflict and leopards who were once very common are now being wiped out from much of India’s landscape. To bring focus on the plight of leopards in a human dominated landscape we undertook an epic effort to document leopards living in close proximity of human habitations across various parts of India. 

This led to crisscrossing the length and breadth of India in search of leopards. Leopard being a secretive predator, it was important for us to act like a lean machine. And of course we didn’t have the massive budgets of large channels. So it was me (Sabyasachi) driving my Tata Safari and Mrudul navigating and moving with me hand in hand, step by step across forests, rivers, deserts, rainforests, ravines, agri fields, mountains and various other landscapes. We faced many near-death experiences like tumbling down from a hill, escaped landslides, accidents, as well as lost footage in power surge and the inevitable budgetary issues. Finally, I decided to distil down and showcase the stories from five states in India – from Rajasthan in North West, Uttarakhand in North, Assam in North East, Karnataka in South and Maharashtra in Western India.

We have also interviewed cross section of people including farmers, village leaders, shepherds, tea garden workers, tribals, people impacted by Human-Leopard Conflict including survivors, experts, NGOs, scientists, Power sector experts advising Government, Psychologists as well as Priests of Temples to examine the impact of human population, rural urban divide, Government Policies, Politics, Cultural ethos, new settlers in forest fringes and hills, Infrastructure development, Fear etc to get a holistic perspective.  This film “Leopards The Last Stand” will be like a discovery of India through a different lens. The music too will give a flavor of the landscape.

The ambitious scale of this film presented many challenges to us, and our passion made us persevere. Understanding leopard behaviour in different parts of the country had its own challenges and took a long time. While traveling in small places in India, I was downloading files into a GRAID and another hard disk. There was a power surge and the hard disk got fried. Despite spending lot of money, we couldn’t recover the files. Lot of amazing footage where leopard had come and sat close to my hide as well as many once in a lifetime footage and interviews were lost forever. It sent me into a depression. It took lot of mind power, spiritual practices, hypnotherapy learnings etc to pull myself out of it and resume shooting. As we were about to wrap up the film, covid throttled us. And then tragedy struck and unfortunately Mrudul passed away. At the core of this effort, we started as a one man and one woman team. Now I am completing this film with only Mrudul’s soul standing by my side. This film took 10 years to complete. With tearful eyes I dedicate this film to (Late) Mrudul Godbole.