“The Last Ranger” is the first film from the “When the World Stopped” anthology series to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Live-Action Short Film. Producer and co-writer Darwin Shaw and director Cindy Lee crafted this multi-generational story to raise awareness about rhino conservation.

“The whole point of this anthology is to show that human beings are all connected, with each story linked by subtle Easter eggs,” Shaw shared. “But this particular story about conservation was especially important to us, especially after witnessing firsthand the realities on the ground.”

The 28-minute film is set in the Eastern Cape of South Africa during the pandemic and follows young Litha (Liyabona Mrogoza), who sets out to sell wooden animal carvings made by her father. Along the way, she meets a local game ranger, Khuselwa (Avumile Qongqo), who invites him to join her on her daily patrol through the game reserve. Their journey takes a perilous turn when they encounter a group of rhino poachers, forcing Litha to confront a harrowing ambush and fight to protect the endangered animals.

Filmed on location at Amakhala Game Reserve, the story is loosely inspired by Tundi, a rhino that survived a brutal poaching attempt. Writers David S. Lee, Will Hawkes, and Shaw highlight the challenges faced by under-resourced rangers, particularly during the pandemic when tourism collapsed and poaching surged.

Lee, who comes from a background in directing commercials, emphasized the importance of incorporating the IsiXhosa language and collaborating with local musicians to give the film its rhythmic soul. The result is a breathtaking cinematic experience, elevated by the poignant performances of newcomers Liyabona Mroqoza and Avumile Qongqo.

“South Africa relies on tourism to survive, and if tourism stops, the consequences will be devastating,” Lee explained. “We made this film for the people of South Africa, ensuring that it authentically reflects the landscape, language, and lived experiences.”

Shaw and Lee spoke with Awards Focus about the challenges of shooting the film in just four and a half days, the search for the perfect Litha, their decision to confront audiences with the stark realities of poaching, and how music became the film’s emotional backbone.

Producer and writer Darwin Shaw (left) and director Cindy Lee (right)

Awards Focus: “The Last Ranger” was initially shortlisted for best live-action short and then received a nomination for an Academy Award. What has the process of selection and nominations been like for you?

Darwin Shaw: I think what’s interesting about the short films is that it’s only the short film voters, who are a very specific group of people, and they are very much film lovers. You’re kind of trying to do a campaign around getting people excited about the film, knowing that they’re really going to vote with their hearts.

There were some films that had more of a campaign or had more buzz around them, and we were doing our utmost to try and focus people in, but you don’t really know what’s happening. It was nerve-wracking. What do you think, Cindy?

Cindy Lee: I’m just sitting here in South Africa minding my own business, you know, and how we went from 180 films to the top 15 blew my mind completely. I’m like, “How did that even happen?” We don’t have names attached to it.

Now we’ve made it, and that’s just incredible. I know that if people watch our film, they’re going to love our film, you know? So, and as Darwin is saying, it’s a tricky thing because we don’t have a name, we don’t have famous people in it. We didn’t make any of the big festivals. We qualified at the Pan-African Film Festival, which was amazing. We are so grateful to them.

We believe in this little film, and we know that if you watch it, you’re going to love it.

AF: Once audiences do start watching the film, you will have star performers because the cast is really phenomenal.

Darwin, was there a consideration to make this into a feature format or were you always intending to make a short? How did you land on this particular story?

Shaw: At the beginning of the pandemic, I had this idea about different countries making a film about stories that are happening in real time and putting them all together into an anthology. I called one of my closest friends [Writer and Producer] Will Hawkes, and asked what he thought, and we spent the next four months developing around 120 stories in different countries around the world.

David Lee, Cindy’s brother, is this incredible actor, and he’d written a feature film around this idea about rhino poaching. He brought us a story, and then we developed it for probably over a year while we were shooting our Danish one.

These reserves couldn’t afford to pay for the rangers. So, this opened the door for poaching because people were also under economic stress. It was a very interesting consequence of the pandemic. Then, when we started to find out about rangers, we realized there were a lot of women who had started being rangers because, previously, they’d had to work far away from their homes. Not only did they protect the rhinos, but it offered these women a chance to lead their own lives financially and be closer to their families.

When we found out that Cindy was in South Africa, we spoke, and it was clear this was someone who could do this in a very short period of time.

We only had four and a half days.

Lee: It was just so incredibly fast. And you know, in South Africa, we don’t have the biggest casting community. We have a tiny pool of actors now. I’m looking for them. They must speak in IsiXhosa, so my pools went down from there.

I saw around 30 actors for the role of “Litha,” and right at the last minute, this little self-tape from Liyabona Mroqoza came in, and we were like, “Wow, there she is.” So, then it was doing shot lists and trying to work out the logistics. And you know, I come from a commercial background, so I know how to tell a quick story.

AF: Aside from working with a younger actor and filming outdoors with lighting changes, and you were also working with live animals. With so many uncontrollable variables, how did you approach production days and getting the coverage you needed?

Shaw: The problem began when Will’s wife got COVID on the flight over, so we had to stop the cast and crew halfway through the first day of shooting, who had driven 12 hours with the cameras, and we found them new places to stay. Then, we had to fly in a nurse from Joburg at six in the morning because there were no COVID kits in this part of the country. I don’t know how you did it, Cindy. It was so stressful.

Lee: I had a good shot list. Never mind working with a child who’s never worked before, but we were shooting with two live rhinos in open vehicles, tracking them with the camera in one vehicle. Then we had to dart the rhino, one of which was the real Tundi, and track it again, and when the rhino fell, we had twenty minutes before they had to wake up. There are also 12 minutes for the vets to do their medical procedures.

AF: Where exactly did filming take place? Was that where Tundi was living?

Lee: Kariega Game Reserve and Amakhala Game Reserve. David wrote the script very loosely on a rhino named Tundi and the vet that saved Tundi’s life works out of that game reserve. He was the one who darted the rhinos and helped us sedate them.

Everybody was so overwhelmed when the rhino went down. Dr. Fowlds was so emotional because it was the same place from 2012, and the rhino nearly didn’t make it. Everybody took five minutes to compose themselves and got right back.

Shaw: And she just got pregnant again two weeks ago.

Lee: For the sixth time, she’s pregnant. We’re so chuffed. And her baby Colin just had a baby.

Shaw: Really?

Lee: It’s amazing.

AF: What makes the film so compelling from its opening moments are those cinematic landscape shots flying over the reserves. How did you achieve those shots?

Lee: There was no question that we had to shoot in the real environment. It shows South Africa’s magnificence and beauty and what we have to offer. The devastation that goes on in such a beautiful landscape at the same time is the horror. South Africa relies on tourism to survive, and we want everybody in South Africa to know that if tourism stops, we will be in a lot of trouble. So we made this film for the people of South Africa, and we wanted to be honest and true about the landscape and language.

AF: Litha is forced to go through a rapid coming of age in the film. What was it like working with Liyabona and the heavy emotions of the character?

Shaw: She was a neighbor doing an audition after she asked if she could have a go. She didn’t have a phone and did her audition in the corridor of a small abode in Soweto. We’re trying to bring her over, actually.

Liya is incredibly precocious and very smart and clearly has something special. We risked melodrama in this because so many things happen. We have a gun battle, someone dying, and an emotional confrontation. We essentially had four beats of progression through the story, which ends on the emotional note of lamenting over the rhino, but most importantly, get to a place where you actually care. If you wanted to care about this little girl, you had to understand her. I think the music really helps to mesh that together.

Lee: It really was quite something else. IsiXhosa has two different languages. There’s like a streets IsiXhosa and a Joburg Isixhosa, and then it has the deep country IsiXhosa where this film was written in the Eastern Cape. Liya had to learn a slightly different language as well. It’s not the same language she speaks with her mother. Avu [Avumile Qongqo] helped her develop her character and spent a lot of time nurturing her when I was busy trying to direct rhinos. We could not have done this film without her and I’m so grateful for how brilliantly clever she was.

AF: The film is confronting in its depiction of rhino poaching. Did you go back and forth about how much to include and how to show it, or was it always in the script?

Shaw: There were discussions about the appearance of the horn and how much blood spatter we would need. What was interesting was once you added the sound effect in the edit, it worked. We were still wondering if it was too much, but it’s amazing how many people have come up to me and said that the moment you hear the squelch when they take the horn out, they felt sick to their stomachs. We always thought it would be the sound of the chainsaw, but it worked, and it’s something Cindy pushed for having in there as well.

Lee: We always said we really wanted people to take note of how horrible this is. It’s happening. I really didn’t believe that without that, you really understood how horrific it is for the rhino. They’re just left lying there with that horn chopped off in such a grotesque way to bleed to death. We need people to stand up and take notice about what is going on. We really want to make a difference in the conversation.

Sometimes, the ranger preemptively removes the horns so there’s nothing to be poached. But the horn is still inside the face, and they’re worth more gram for gram than gold. If you’re desperate enough, you will kill the rhino and cut it out of its face.

AF: I think it’s brave filmmaking to confront the audience with the question of their own comfortability with the reality of what it means to poach a rhino. And it’s because Litha is seeing the animals for the first time, that she’d only known as wooden figurines, that brings that emotional connection to her journey.

But what ties it all together is this wonderful score and choir. Can you talk a bit about working with composer John Powell and how the music for the film came together?

Shaw: We’d met John Powell during the process of finding a score. We had three at this point. John’s partner mentioned a choir that went viral, and we contacted them. They’d been discovered singing on the street in Khayelitsha when they were 16 or 17. John decided that we needed a solo sound to add to the score, and we also had these three women from the Ngqoko Women’s Ensemble. Will drove two hours to their village to record in their hut, which had clay soil on the floor.

We thought we were losing people at the beginning of the film, but John took what he had created for the end and put it right at the beginning. We locked the film, mastered it, and got goosebumps when we saw it. There’s something transcendent about bringing the woman’s voice into the picture, this purity that is Litha.

AF: What did you take away from your experience working on “The Last Ranger” that will help you in your next projects?

Lee: I’ve learned so much from Darwin and from Will about the importance of collaboration in a project. If you work with the right people and you allow everybody to bring something to the project, then everyone can make it better. I’m really going to struggle to work with anybody else again.

Shaw: [Cindy] is very collaborative and she’s very strong. She’s very clear about what she wants to do. I certainly needed that. I’m also much more in the mindset of spending more early in terms of time because you’re going to save so much and give yourself so many more opportunities. But ultimately, the pressure forced us to really create scenes, and we captured the essence of what the story is.

About The Author

Founder, Deputy Awards Editor

Matthew Koss is the Deputy Awards Editor at Awards Focus and a Senior Film and TV Coverage Partner.

He is the host and creator of the weekly YouTube series The Wandering Screen with Matt Koss, which features dynamic reviews of all the latest film and TV releases. His writing has also appeared in The Movie Buff, Voyage LA, and ScreenRant, and he is a moderator for post-screening Q&As.

Since joining Awards Focus in 2020, Matthew has interviewed A-list talent, including Academy Award nominee Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emmy winner Alex Borstein, and Lovecraft Country’s Jonathan Majors, across film and TV. He also appears on red carpets for major studios and film festivals, most recently with Netflix's The Crown and Hulu’s The Bear.

After moving from Melbourne, Australia, to Los Angeles in 2014, Matthew has worked in various areas of the entertainment industry, including talent and literary representation, film/TV development as a Creative Executive, and at film festivals as a Regional Manager. Matthew is also a screenwriting consultant, most recently partnering with Roadmap Writers, where he conducted private, multi-week mentorship consultations, roundtables, and monthly coaching programs.

Matthew is also a producer, and he recently appeared at the Los Angeles Shorts International Film Festival with his film Chimera, directed by Justin Hughes.

He continues to work with entertainment companies such as Warner Bros. Discovery, Zero Gravity Management, Sundance Institute, and MGMT Entertainment.

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