Living with Leopards (2024)

Living with Leopards Review

Summary

Living with Leopards is a feature documentary that chronicles the lives of wild leopards in their natural habitats. Over two years, a small dedicated crew follows a mother and her struggle to save her two cubs from predators and teach them to hunt. Eventually she must protect her next litter from the very same animals she has taught them to kill.

Is It Any Good?

Living with Leopards, streaming on Netflix, shows shot after shot of stunning cinematography that captures both the beauty of these graceful creatures and the hard realities of life in their eat-or-get-eaten world. This documentary is not for the faint of heart impalas are stalked, killed, torn apart and devoured in gruesome detail. It’s also not for those who can’t tolerate excessive anthropomorphism: The narrator continually tells us what each animal is thinking at every moment. After a group of baboons chases off a young leopard, he says solemnly: “She realized things can change quickly out here.” Did she? Did she really learn anything from the experience? We have no idea. During a mating sequence, he asserts matter-of-factly without any possible way of knowing that “she makes sure he [the male leopard] knows these are going to be his cubs.” And after the mother and her now-grown daughter get into an altercation among a trio of hyenas over a wildebeest carcass, he intones: “You could see confusion in Kutjira’s [the daughter’s] face.” No you couldn’t; I assure you there was nothing visible on that leopard’s face but teeth.

That said, we cannot help but respect these crafty hunters’ intelligence and patience as they stalk their prey through grass so tall it swallows them whole or feel for these lovely creatures when they themselves become food.

Movie Review

Netflix loves pumping out documentaries lately, and they are good at it. People seem to go to other streaming platforms for fiction and come here for rawness, and this time around, it’s a stunning documentary on leopards.

Living with Leopards is not just about leopards though, from cubs to other wildlife, even the crew. Most times when we watch documentaries about wildlife, it’s only about them and that’s fine because it should be. But Living with Leopards has set itself apart.

It’s educational, its playful, and more. There are too many moments of uniqueness in Living with Leopards that I can’t compare it to any other nature or wildlife documentary on Netflix. Once you press play on Living with Leopards you’re not going to want to hit pause.

There isn’t a single moment of boredom throughout Living with Leopards so if you have been looking for a starting point when it comes to documentaries especially deep in the jungle then look no further than Living with Leopards on Netflix.

Naturally, the Living with Leopards film crew has managed to catch leopards and their cubs in the wild, whether it’s hunting prey or jumping from a tree or taking unlikely risks or anything else but this group of documentarians is far from ordinary.

Living with Leopards has music. Not just any music upbeat songs that you wouldn’t have thought to put into a documentary like this one, which only makes it better.

The people are all long-termers; they’ve spent forever far back in the jungle with these amazing creatures, and we get to see a little bit about what they go through and how they do it, but it’s done subtly.

It’s not behind-the-scenes; it’s not like there were no people involved in making this thing. I think that helps me connect – sometimes with something like this I can watch it and feel overwhelmed because while you’re watching you keep thinking “I could never do that.” Then when it’s over you forget about it. But if there are people mixed in along the way then I don’t care so much and I pay more attention.

Conclusion

As far as wildlife documentaries go, Living with Leopards may be one of the most beautiful films ever made so if you liked this subgenre then check out this Netflix doc! Let us know your thoughts down below!

Watch Living with Leopards For Free On Gomovies.