Duma

Carroll Ballard's last film is the story of a boy in South Africa and an orphaned cheetah cub. Xan raises him on the farm, but as the cheetah grows he can no longer be kept in a house, and the boy decides to take him back to the country he came from. The journey is harsher than a children's film would suggest: thirst, a crossing of the desert, and the fact that a cheetah is genuinely a wild animal. Ballard works with animals here as he always did. The scenes are not assembled digitally; the camera observes the animal, and the cheetah's movement is consequently the most striking thing in the film. Alexander Michaletos plays the boy in his only screen role, with Eamonn Walker, Campbell Scott and Hope Davis in the cast. It opened on 22 April 2005, and Warner Bros. barely distributed it. It received a limited release in the United States with no marketing and took under a million dollars worldwide. The gap between its critical reception and its box office is an object lesson in how distribution decisions can erase a film. Who it is for: viewers who love nature and animal films and Ballard's observational cinema. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a fast-moving family picture.