Safari

A vacation film about murder, and a film that delves into human nature: this is how Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl describes his extremely unsettling, tragicomic documentary on big game hunting by white tourists in Africa. What motivates these people? Grown-up people who see killing wild animals in the savanna as comparable to an annual skiing holiday. In their tropical outfits, they talk about the rituals they perform before taking a shot, and the feeling of release when they find a cadaver. Every year, they can be found in the wildlife reservations of South Africa and Namibia, clutching a beer, waiting for hours having paid to shoot a lion, a zebra or a giraffe. What motivates these people?

Ulrich Seidl: "With Safari I wasn't interested…