The Silent Jungles
The jungles of South East Asia should be deafening: birdsong, insects, the calls of monkeys and the movement of large animals through the canopy. Instead, there is silence. Filmmaker Sean Brandt spends several months deep in these forests trying to understand why.
With a local translator at his side, he moves from village to village, sitting down with hunters, farmers and families. Their answers are candid and unsettling. Nearly every animal has been trapped, either to feed families living in poverty or to supply the illegal wildlife trade.
What Sean uncovers is a hidden economy operating in plain sight. Hundreds of captured pythons are hidden beneath thatched village huts. Bears are kept in attics so their bile can be drained and sold to buyers who believe it boosts virility. Tigers are hunted for their body parts, which are prized in the same markets. Crocodiles are held by the hundreds, waiting to be killed for their skins.
Then Sean finds the resorts. Guests arrive, walk past cages of live endangered animals and choose one to be slaughtered and cooked for their dinner. Afterwards they are offered local sex workers and the chance to relax in the stillness of the jungle. That stillness is exactly what their appetites have created.
The Silent Jungles is an intimate, confronting journey into the human forces emptying the world’s forests: poverty, demand, greed and indifference. It asks what is left of a jungle once its voice has gone, and who will answer for that loss.