Movie Thoughts: Pride: Days of Danger (2016)

 

• Released: 2016
• Directed by: Reinhard Radke
  
• Running time: 49 min
• Rating: 3.5/5

Synopsis

The struggles of a group of mother lionesses trying to keep their cubs alive during the wet season, with the threat of rival predators, drowning and male lions being around every corner.

My Thoughts

Apparently Reinhard Radke is just some prolific German (or at least from a German-speaking country) nature documentary maker, because there's a lot of his documentaries on Netflix. I watched some of them during my stay in Austria for winter vacation.

What I did not know going into this documentary is that it is actually a sequel to another of his documentaries: Rulers at Risk. Because of the title I'm going to assume that one focuses more on the male lions, because this one is titled Der Kampf der Mütter (The Mother's Battle) in German and heavily focuses on the lionesses and their cubs in favor of male lions.

I actually really liked this because most lion documentaries tend to revolve around an entire pride. Which is also the case here, but the males are definitely given less focus. Heck, they're even antagonists quite often because they pose a threat to the cubs in a sense that they can both kill them and also steal the prey the mothers need in order to nurse them.

Overall this was a beautifully-shot documentary, very informative and I liked following these mothers and their cubs in their ongoing struggle for survival. It wasn't always pretty (quite a few cubs do not make it) but eventually the battle was worth it. I also very much appreciate the fact that this documentary doesn't just portray the males in prides as dominant rulers. A lesser known fact about lions is that technically they're matrilineal and matriarchal. The males also have some authority, of course, but they don't stick around and are mostly just there temporarily, when the females will in most cases stay and be dominant. There's of course some things the males do dominate in, such as killing cubs of the previous male and eating first if they can, but otherwise lion prides are nowadays considered to be pretty much matriarchal. 

The documentary was made before this whole matriarchal view of the species came out (I think, I can't find an exact date but I've only seen it pop up in papers and articles in recent years), but it still does in a way paint the females as being their own leaders and the males as more temporary members, so I appreciate that it at least got close to this newer vision of the species, intentionally or not.

Overall a good documentary. Also, despite it being a sequel, it can be watched separately from Rulers at Risk, which is nice.

Also, I've just realized that lion media loves to put "pride" in their titles, huh. Simba's Pride, Pride (the early 2000s children's movie), My Pride, Pride (this documentary duology I'm reviewing here), Pride of Baghdad. Huh.