The nominees for Wildscreen’s prestigious Panda Awards 2024 have been announced.
Wildlife conservation charity Wildscreen has announced the nominees of their prestigious Panda Awards 2024 – the leading global awards for the wildlife and environmental film and TV industry.
This year’s competition attracted nearly 700 productions, across 15 categories, from all over the world.
The winners of each category, along with the highly anticipated Golden Panda for the best overall production, will be announced at the Panda Awards Ceremony on 17 October at the Bristol Harbour Hotel in Bristol, UK. Don’t worry if you can’t make it in person – the awards will be live-streamed globally.
But you don’t need to wait until then to get a taste of what’s on offer. From an intimate glimpse into the largest chimpanzee community ever discovered, to one of the most significant rewilding experiments in Europe, here are 13 trailers from some of the awards’ top contenders.
A full list of the nominees can be found on the Wildscreen website.
Wildscreen Panda Awards 2024 trailers
A call from the wild
Filmmaker Asgeir Helgestad documents the state of nature at his home country Norway, where he has photographed all his life. From the lives of bees at his farm, to wild reindeer on the high mountains, and puffins at the ocean’s edge, he shows the beauty of threatened nature and tracks down human actions responsible for its decline.
This is a personal story on our connection with the non-human world, the relations between the small and the big, and a reminder of nature’s strength and vulnerability.
Kuishi Na Simba (Living With Lions)
Rugari and his family live on the border of the Serengeti. During the dry season hungry lions threaten their village, and Rugari is faced with a terrible decision – save his livelihood, or find a way to live with lions?
Rhino man
Rhino man follows the courageous field rangers who risk their lives every day to protect South Africa’s rhinos from being poached to extinction. Anton Mzimba, the head ranger of the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve, takes us into his world as he faces long deployments away from family, dangerous working conditions, and constant threats to his life.
Nearby, legendary trainer, Ruben de Kock, laments the loss of his best friend and business partner, as he and his wife, Marianne, struggle to take a group of 41 candidates through a rigorous ranger selection at the Southern African Wildlife College. It’s a race to inspire the next generation to care for the rhinos and the natural word, before poachers and habitat loss wipe out one species after another. Greed, desperation, and violence are met with an even stronger set of forces. Those of love, dedication, and a willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice for a better future.
Living with Leopards
A film crew follows two leopard cubs as they make the fascinating journey from infancy into adulthood in this up-close-and-personal nature documentary.
Wilding
Based on Isabella Tree’s best-selling book by the same title, Wilding tells the story of a young couple that bets on nature for the future of their failing, four-hundred-year-old estate.
The young couple battles entrenched tradition, and dares to place the fate of their farm in the hands of nature. Ripping down the fences, they set the land back to the wild and entrust its recovery to a motley mix of animals both tame and wild. It is the beginning of a grand experiment that will become one of the most significant rewilding experiments in Europe.
Mammals
Found on every continent and in every ocean, mammals are some of the most adaptable animals on our planet. Join Sir David Attenborough as he follows the journeys of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.
Earthsounds
Hear our planet like never before. Narrated by Tom Hiddleston, Earthsounds travels to spectacular habitats, including the Queensland rainforest, the Antarctic ice shelf, the Namibian dunes, tropical coral reefs and more.
Discoveries and rarely heard recordings from the series include snow leopards singing love songs, the intimate chatter of ostrich chicks from inside their eggs, musical spiders, walrus’s underwater courtship calls and more.
Secret World of Sound with David Attenborough
Using cutting-edge audio technology, David Attenborough explores the extraordinary ways that animals hear and produce sound to reveal new perspectives and understanding of animal behaviour.
See how baby caiman communicate with each other from within the egg, how lions and hyaenas battle in the dark using sound, how a strange fish baffled local residents with its eerie hum, and how some birds have mastered the art of mimicry to remarkable effect.
A Real Bug’s Life
Inspired by the World of Disney and Pixar’s “A Bug’s Life,” the new series is an incredible adventure into nine different micro bug worlds around the globe, where the forces of nature play out on a miniature scale and where tiny creatures rely on amazing powers and extraordinary alliances to make it through each day.
Animals Up Close with Bertie Gregory
Bertie Gregory is back, and this time, the adventures are even more epic! Bertie takes us to the most spectacular corners of our planet — from Antarctica to Africa and South America to Asia – tracking down extraordinary animals to capture their daily lives like never before.
Armed with drones, state-of-the-art cameras, and underwater tech, he and his team brave subzero seas, climb snow-capped mountains, and sleep suspended 120 feet in the air to reveal the challenges these animals endure, their fierce rivalries, and the threats they face on our changing planet.
Australia’s Wild Odyssey
Follow the flow of water across the Australian continent to uncover the incredible connections that link all creatures on earth: from ants, to eagles, to us.
Over three dynamic episodes, this series sets out on a journey across the driest inhabited continent – following the rain, rivers and underground aquifers as they transform and connect distant ecosystems. Each story reveals a new piece in the biological systems that have allowed life to thrive on our planet for billions of years.
Chimp Empire
The largest group of chimpanzees ever discovered have built a complex society deep in the forest of Ngogo, Uganda — but ambition and neighboring rivals threaten to destabilize their empire.
The Panda Awards are the jewel in the crown of the Wildscreen Festival, the headline event in the natural world storytelling calendar, convening over 2,000 of the world’s leading filmmakers, broadcasters and content creators between the 14-18 October.
Frozen Planet II
Frozen Planet returns with a spellbinding journey through magical icy lands. Here, the planet’s most enigmatic animals reign supreme. Wolves hunt huge bison across vast snowy plains. Killer whales use cunning techniques to stalk their prey. And rarely seen Siberian tigers pad quietly through crisp white snow. Frozen Planet II captures these fairy tale animals and lands on the cusp of change.
About the Panda Awards
The Panda Awards are the highlight of the Wildscreen Festival, the headline event in the natural world storytelling calendar, convening over 2,000 of the world’s leading filmmakers, broadcasters and content creators between the 14-18 October.
Hybrid and online passes for Wildscreen Festival and the Panda Awards Ceremony are available to buy here.
The full list of nominees is available here.
About wildlife stories from around the world
- 10 of the world’s most uplifting wildlife stories from 2024 (so far)
- Pure serenity: newborn macaque dreaming in its mother’s arms shortlisted in Creative Photo Awards 2024
- 15 remarkable images from the Mangrove Photography Awards 2024
- Unique time-lapse photography shows ‘dramatic’ recovery of Scotland’s most threatened habitats