Naya: der Wald hat tausend Augen (2020)

Directed by: Sebastian Mulder | 25 minutes | documentary

2018 was the year in which the wolf returned to Belgium after an absence of more than a hundred years. The she-wolf Naya, equipped with a transmitter collar, made a journey of more than twelve hundred kilometers from northern Germany, eventually arriving at a military training ground in Leopoldsburg. No one observed the predator on that long journey. The first images of Naya in Belgium were made with wildlife cameras. In Belgian Limburg, the she-wolf also met August, the male congener who eventually made Naya pregnant. In the fall of 2019, however, Naya disappeared from the radar. Most likely, the she-wolf was shot by hunters.

The short documentary ‘Naya: der Wald hat tausend Augen’ (a German hunter jargon saying that when you look at the forest a thousand animal eyes look back at you) is a cinematic account of Naya’s journey, made up entirely of images captured with wildcams and security cameras have been shot. So forget the crystal clear HD images that you know from the expensive BBC nature films: in this short film you have to make do with grainy images in black and white.

This approach gives ‘Naya: der Wald hat tausend Augen’ an authentic look. Moreover, it is nice to see that wolves do not just feel at home in vast wildernesses. The security cameras show that on her quest for the Belgian country, Naya has also simply crossed the cultural landscape and even traveled along city edges and through villages without ever being seen by a human eye. Images showing Naya and August attacking a flock of sheep show why many livestock and hobby farmers are not eager to welcome the wolf. The images are supplemented with audio fragments from news reports and interviews with wolf experts.

This somewhat fragmentary image collage does not go very deep, but ‘Naya: der Wald hat tausend Augen’ does show in a compact and insightful way what distances a wandering wolf can cover in a short time and what social reactions evoke its return in a country that is not more accustomed to the presence of one of Europe’s apex predators.

Frank Heinen