Film-maker Valmik Thapar’s love letter to a tiger clan in India has been 50 years in the making. You’ll be left agog at this tale of obsession, survival – and poachers out for blood
Valmik Thapar saw his first wild tiger 50 years ago. “You lose yourself within yourself,” he says. He had travelled on a whim from Delhi to Ranthambore nature reserve in northern India – one of nine parks created by the Project Tiger conservation initiative launched by the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, in 1973 – and basically never left.
The hour-long documentary My Tiger Family is a photo album of the time he spent with these unendingly magnificent beasts, concentrating on the five matriarchs he has watched claim the prey-stuffed territory around Ranthambore’s lakes.