The King Of The Savannah

Jorge Alesanco has spent more than 3,000 nights in the Masai Mara. A naturalist and ethologist, he became the first person accepted by a pride of wild lions, and this series places that extraordinary relationship at the centre of a documentary unlike any other.

Filmed from just centimetres away over a decade of unbroken observation, The King of the Savannah follows a pride across its full arc, from the first weeks of a cub's life through the brutal contests that determine who rules and who is driven out. The footage is hyperrealistic and often startling in its proximity. Births, territorial invasions, nocturnal hunts, the slow collapse of an ageing male's reign: all of it is captured with a rigour grounded in ethological research and narrated by Alesanco in the first person.

The series extends beyond the lions themselves. It tracks the great wildebeest and zebra migration from the Serengeti to the Mara River, documents the five-strong Tano Bora coalition of cheetahs, and observes crocodiles and leopards with the same sustained attention.

Winner of the Gold World Medal at the New York Festivals TV and Film Awards in 2024, this is a work of genuine scientific depth and rare visual intimacy.