The Okavango in Southern Africa is one of the greatest rivers on Earth – and it is also a river like no other. It starts in the mountains of Angola, but unlike normal rivers, its waters don’t run towards the ocean.

 

Instead, the Okavango flows inland through Angola and into Botswana - only to vanish completely in the Kalahari desert, after a journey of 1,500 kilometres. Almost all of the water eventually evaporates, and very little actually seeps away, down into the soil.

 

But it is the way the film is constructed that intrigues, as a journey drawing on Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, from the Inferno to Limbo to Paradise, and through the eyes of characters like male lions who climb trees to find their prides, that hunt massive herds of buffalo on termite castles of clay.

 

An extensive array of animals are shown in this film, living in harmony with the mighty river as they hunt, forage, and scavenge alongside the constantly shifting water’s edge. But the water itself is a character, a female entity that is both, a nurturing force, and a seductive, even fickle one.

 

But while these lions and leopards, elephants and hippos, warthogs and crocodiles, painted dogs, bush babies, and many more, thrive and survive here, it is by one rule: that someone’s paradise is someone else’s purgatory. It is a testament to the interconnectedness of life on Earth, but also a chilling reminder that these pristine places can disappear under human-created bush fires, or other climate-related changes we impose. Hanging on to this precious jewel of nature should be a major rallying cry and cause for us all.

 

Filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert have created an utterly breathtaking example of visual storytelling with rich clarity. Each dazzling close-up of the exotic life here is truly remarkable, as is the narration by Dereck Joubert himself, accompanying the stunning images. Calling itself a love letter to the greatest river in Africa, Okavango observes a unique ecosystem with a skilled

and deeply perceptive eye.