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If there's one unifying factor among the hunters, conservationists, protesters and anti-poachers, it's that no one wants to see a world without animals.
Some see species to be hunted, others to be protected. But a planet without any creatures altogether is a bleak reality indeed.
Those are the themes explored in the documentary "Trophy," which is premiering at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
"I don't want to live in a world where there are no rhinos, giraffes or elephants, but we're definitely headed that way," said co-director Christina Clusiau. "I think it's more about letting go of our truths and our beliefs and actually having a conversation about what's right for each individual species. Learning more about the subject, not just jumping forward with anything that feels right from your heart."
Clusiau, who directed "Trophy" alongside Shaul Schwarz, explored the intertwined issues of trophy hunting and conservation. The film follows a trophy hunter, a trophy game breeder, a rhinoceros conservationist and breeder, and an anti-poaching professional to explore the intricacies and complications of treating animals as a commodity.
Schwarz, who grew up in Israel without exposure to hunting culture, stumbled on a photo in 2013 of a man posing next to an elephant he had hunted for sport. He was outraged initially, but decided to explore the issue with Clusiau, who had grown up in Minnesota where "hunting is a rite of passage."
"It's one of these worlds that if you're not a part of it, I think you have a preconceived idea," Schwarz said. "As we tumbled into it starting with the hunting and really when we went down, we wanted to almost use hunting as an excuse to go into this idea of sustained utilization: What does it really mean to put value on an animal and how do you generate that?"
The hunter depicted in the film, Phillip Glass, raises sheep on a ranch in Texas to sustain his livelihood, but obsesses over hunting the "Big Five" in Africa — water buffalo, lion, leopard, elephant and rhino.
In contrast, rhino breeder John Hume protects 1,500 rhinos on a ranch in South Africa, periodically harvesting their horns — a process in terms of pain akin to trimming human nails — in an effort to prevent poachers from killing the animals outright for their horns. But he is going broke because his country issued a moratorium in 2009 on the sale of rhino horn.
The film showcases various sides of the issues and attempts to give a voice to people who were true to themselves while confronting a thorny issue of dwindling animal populations versus man's dominion over beast.
"You open up and allow people to tell their own truth about what they really believe and try to be nonjudgmental and nonbiased," Clusiau said. "I think that's really important to have this larger conversation about this issue."
The directors also sought out Chris Moore, an anti-poaching manager in Zimbabwe, whose efforts are partially subsidized by big-game hunters while he tries to protect communities from roaming wild animals.
Moore, at the very crosshairs of the spectrum of trophy hunting, protecting locals and poaching, has one of the most poignant quotes in the film: "We're fighting to save something so somebody else can kill it."
Clusiau said Moore grounded the film in reality, disabusing perceptions like those portrayed in "The Lion King" that lions are a "cuddly creature that we all revere and love."
"I think sometimes we believe that there's this utopian world in magical Africa that the animals just roam free and they live alone on these vast plains, but that's not the reality and I think Chris helps the viewer understand that because of habitat loss and human encroachment and poaching, it's more of a dire situation than we here believe," she said.
Both directors said they found complexity in a subject that originally seemed to pit hunters against conservationists — and that they sought to open a dialogue to make viewers on one side or the other question their "absolute truths."
"The trophy for Phillip is maybe the lion on the wall or the adventure of the kill. The trophy for John is the ability to possibly conserve these species. The trophy for Chris is stopping the poachers from killing all the elephants. For the poachers, the trophy is the money they receive for killing the elephants," Clusiau said. "This symbolism of what a trophy really is to different people I think is important. … One man's treasure is another man's trophy."
Twitter: @BrennanJSmith At Sundance
"Trophy" (U.S. Documentary Competition) screens Saturday at noon at Temple Theatre in Park City and at 9 p.m. at Broadway Centre Cinema 6 in Salt Lake City, Sunday, at noon at Sundance Mountain Resort, Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at Redstone Cinema 1 in Park City, and Friday, Jan. 27, at 2:30 p.m. at Prospector Square Theatre in Park City.