When Bollywood films showed the man-animal conflict

Over the years, a handful of films have attempted to show the conflict between man and animal as the humans enter the jungles. On World Wildlife Day, we take a look at these films

India’s answer to King Kong, Shikari followed a group of hunters who travel to the jungles of Malay to capture a giant ape known as Otango. The film borrowed elements from Hollywood classics like Dr Cyclops and King Kong

While films like Banphool and Haathi Mere Saathi (both released 1971) prominently featured elephants, they did so in an urban setting. It was MS Sathyu’s Indo-Soviet production Kala Parvat that took viewers into the forest in this tale of an elephant herd tackling drought

The multistarrer thriller tackled the issue of tiger poaching in India’s national parks and was set in Orbit, a fictionalized version of the Jim Corbett National Park. Shot almost entirely on location, the film blended social issues and themes of adventure and horror

Directed by Hollywood filmmaker Chuck Russell, the film shows a veterinary doctor – played by Vidyut Jammwal – who upon returning to his father's elephant reserve, encounters and fights against poachers

The trilingual film (Kaadan in Tamil and Aranya in Telugu) stars Rana Daggubati and highlights the issue of elephant abuse in India. The film will release in theatres later this month

This upcoming film, starring Vidya Balan as a forest officer, is currently being shot in the jungles of Madhya Pradesh. The film focusses on the man-wildlife conflict in India’s forests and it’s shoot began on World Wildlife Day last year, before coming to a halt due to the pandemic