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A short film set in the Amakhala Game Reserve has made waves across the globe as the second chapter to another film made by When The World Stopped, an international film project founded by Los Angeles-based Darwin Shaw and William Hawkes.
Set during the Covid-19 pandemic, and filmed in 2021, The Last Ranger depicts the atrocities of rhino poaching, as well as the heartbreaking lived experiences of game rangers, and poachers.
Since its debut, the short film has won numerous international accolades, most notably winning the Best Short Narrative award at the 2024 Pan-African Film Festival in Los Angeles, making it an eligible contender for the 2025 Oscars.
The Antiviral Film Project, now called When the World Stopped, was created in 2020 as an anthology of short films.
Speaking from Edinburgh, Shaw explained the ongoing project — which aimed to produce 19 short films, with 19 crews in 19 global communities for 19 different charities.
This has since grown to 24. The aim remains to combine the films as interlinked feature films.
“Lockdown was such a profound experience, never before had the whole of humanity been faced with this challenge,” Shaw said.
“I thought it would be amazing to tell stories from every country, about how we were all going through the same experience.
“Obviously things changed and it became a lot more separate. But the internet was a way we could all come together.”
A former emergency medical doctor from London, Shaw studied classical theatre at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
His film credits include Casino Royale, John Carter, and several acclaimed TV series such as House of Cards and Homeland.
“I contacted a great friend, Will Hawkes, who was totally on board to develop this,” he said.
“We became a team of showrunners, we reached out to friends, actors we had met and started to float this idea.
“We wanted to take each story and combine them into a big piece.”
Hawkes has worked in the film industry as both an actor and director.
His most recent directorial project, R.V — a story on women’s reproductive rights — won numerous festival awards, had a viral campaign that saw more than half-a-million views and partnered with the Reproductive Health Access Project.
“We created this preformed idea about what the stories needed to be to fit together.
“They were set on the backdrop of the pandemic but not about the pandemic.
“It was these powerful human, emotional stories that had a universal theme to them,” Shaw said.
The first short story, Carl and the Janitor, was filmed with a crew from Denmark.
Carl and the Janitor takes place in a school, preparing the campus for the return of in-person learning.
A young boy, an old man and his dog find peace in a world that doesn’t understand them.
The dog receives a gift, they share an orange soda. Their friendship would pierce any cold heart.
Richard, the janitor fixes a crooked poster from Amakhala Game Reserve.
“The aim was to put them all together. We had to find a way of making them feel it was one piece of work.
“We decided to have Easter eggs in each film.
“In The Last Ranger we have a woman walking past in a green dress. We have a story in Latvia about Mara the goddess of death, she traditionally is represented with green.
“We will stitch them together, as you leave Carl and the Janitor you will go into the stars and go round the world and down into SA. It’s a cinematic journey around the world.”
The anthology uses a pay-it-forward model, where each film funds the next.
Sales are split, with half going to the next project and the other towards a charity linked to each film’s cause.
All donations can be made through the Six Feet Films Foundation, a registered nonprofit foundation for direct donations to pre-production on a future film, including its cause.
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