Oscar-Contending Short ‘The Elephant Whisperers’ Centers On Indigenous Indian Couple And Their Sizeable Family
deadline.comBomman and Belli, the human stars of The Elephant Whisperers, are not your typical parents. Then again, their “children” aren’t typical either—weighing in at roughly 300 lbs.
by the time they turn three months old. The couple has proven unusually successful at raising orphaned elephant calves—bringing up two “kids” so far, Raghu and Ammu, in the Theppakadu Elephant camp within the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in South India.
Director Kartiki Gonsalves spent five years following this human-elephant blended family for her Netflix film, an Oscar contender for Best Documentary Short. “I met Raghu when he was exactly three months old,” says Gonsalves, who hails from a mountain village in South India. “He was so young and extremely vulnerable at that point.
I spent about a year and a half with him when he was a tiny baby before this became a documentary.” Raghu’s mother had been electrocuted at a fence surrounding a village, leaving her baby little chance of survival.
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