The Flying Gold of Arabuko
2019 · 10m · United Kingdom
Directed by John Davies
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Butterfly farming in Kenya becomes an unlikely savior of the last great East African coastal forest.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the heartwarming doc about saving forests—Davies flips it by making *butterflies* the protagonist, not the backdrop, which is genuinely weird and shouldn't work but does.
A formally restrained documentary that sits comfortably in the essay-film tradition, letting the particularity of one ecosystem speak to broader conservation arguments without voiceover melodrama.
The decision to let the farming cycle—the actual labor and metamorphosis—carry the narrative weight rather than crisis-driven urgency is what transforms this from well-intentioned to necessary.
Reviews
Director John Davies tells a literal, living story of the butterfly effect in this uplifting documentary short. The film is told from the perspective of someone who once contributed to the environmental devastation himself, but whose work is now inextricably linked to protecting the fragile ecosystem from extinction.