My Tiger Family

With Valmik Thapar

In the jungles of north-western India there is a magical fort that has stood for more than a thousand years. For centuries, rulers battled over its control. Today, it’s home to the most filmed, most studied, most famous tigers on Earth. This is their story, told by the man who’s devoted his life to keeping them alive.

There are more wild tigers living in India than anywhere else in the world. And Ranthambhore, with its lakes and forests, rich with prey, is one of their most important strongholds. But fifty years ago, these tigers lived like ghosts: barely heard, rarely seen, they were creatures that emerged only in the depths of night. Centuries of hunting had driven them into hiding. But then, in the early 1970s there was a ban on hunting and the country’s laws were changed to protect Ranthambhore as a pioneering tiger reserve. It transformed the tigers’ fortunes.

Back then Valmik Thapar was living in Delhi, a documentary filmmaker in his early twenties with no knowledge of wild tigers. But when his first marriage collapsed he needed to escape the city. “And one afternoon, I just walked out of my house, leaving everything behind and caught a train to Ranthambhore,” he says. It was a whim that changed his life. He fell in love with the beauty of the place and, with the help of the park director, Fateh Singh Rathore, Valmik saw his first Ranthambhore tiger. They called her Padmini.

Tiger family life revolves around the female and Padmini was the first of five tigresses that have become like family to Valmik. Through them Valmik has learnt more than perhaps anyone else on Earth about wild tigers. He has charted their births, lives and deaths; he has watched as family members have been slaughtered for their skin and bone and, not once but twice, seen the clan’s numbers almost entirely decimated by poaching. But today, the population is growing and there are more tigers in Ranthambhore now than ever before in living memory.

For this film, Valmik has collated fifty years of his archive (together with that of friends, colleagues and family members) to tell a dramatic, intimate and magical story of half a century of tiger life.

Photographs by Dickie Singh, Dharmendra Khandal and Valmik Thapar.

 

Programme Credits:

Directed, Produced and Written by
Mike Birkhead
Beth Jones

BBC Commissioner
Tom Coveney

Photography
George Woodcock

Film Editors
Matt Blandford
Nigel Buck
Marc Davies
Mark Fletcher

Composer
David Mitcham

Scientific Consultant
Dharmendra Khandal

Director of the Making Of and Assistant Producer
Edo Dzafic (link to separate page)

Sound
David Yapp
David Ingram
Andrew Yarme
Sam Hoskins

Colourist
Paul Ingavarsson
Liam Hughes

Graphics
Lina Kalcheva
Ida Melum

Line Producer
Cherry Dorrett

Programme Manager
Caroline Aitzetmuller

Field Producer
Steve Dorrett

Some exciting and exceptional archive and clips were filmed by

Kalyan Varma
Subbiah Nallamuthu
Colin Stafford Johnson
Anisha Heble
Archina Singh
Jaisal Singh
Tejbir Singh
Nyra Singh
Vijay Kumawat
Salim Ali
Dharmendra Khandal

The film was made with the support of Jerome and Sophie Sedoux and was a coproduction with PBS/WNET Group and Pathe Films.

Copyright
Mike Birkhead Associates MMXXIV

 

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