Maasai women battle not only their culture, but their interior demons, to become East Africa’s first all-female anti-poaching unit.
RANGER is a story about the wilderness within us all. Set amongst Kenya’s Maasai community, an intimate and contemporary tale of self-discovery unfolds, as 12 women become East Africa’s first all-female anti-poaching unit. Upending the male-dominated reliance upon military-style training to make a wildlife ranger, Virginia, Liz, Momina, and Damaris instead undergo a 6-month rite of passage rooted in deep trauma-release and healing processes. Their journey triggers profound transformation, sending shockwaves through their communities.
A word to the spectacular natural theater of the film: RANGER largely takes place in the middle of the Laikipia plateau, on the slopes of the snow-capped Mount Kenya. It is a place of warriors, cattle, and goat-herding pastoralist tribes, horizons lined by acacia trees, plains roamed by giants. It’s where our species began. While it is a deeply human story, the film also pays homage to this precious place by letting the audience feel the natural symphony of rain, blistering heat, the thirst of land and animal alike, the crisp Laikipia night, and the exhilaration and vulnerability of sleeping in the bush under the moon and stars.
RANGER is a love letter to all of this, and a call to action to a new generation of heroes and heroines.
Austin Peck
Based in Kenya for over a decade, Austin Peck is a Nairobi-based film director whose works include the feature length documentary film GARDENERS OF EDEN, about Kenya’s David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and their fight against the ivory trade. (Netflix, 2015 Peabody Award Nominee, Audience Choice Award -Mill Valley Film Festival, Director’s Award - Sedona Film Festival. Acquired and released by Pivot/Participant Media (US television), National Geographic TV. Executive Producers Kristin Davis (Sex and the City) and Bryn Mooser (RYOT/XTR). Peck’s first feature-length documentary TOUGH BOND, a story about the gritty underworld of children from Kenya's northern pastoralist tribes living on Nairobi's streets, premiered in 2012 in competition at Berlinale (Berlin, Germany), with a North American premiere in competition at Hot Docs (Toronto, Canada).
More recently, Peck directed an 11-episode investigative news series in virtual reality titled The Big Picture (Huffington Post, Google and Hulu), featuring stories from occupied Palestine, Standing Rock, and anti-recidivism programs in California State Prisons. In 2016 and 2017, Peck directed a 6-hour investigative documentary series for KTV Kenya on police corruption, (Winner, Journalists of the Award, Kenya, 2017).
Between 2014-2017, Peck also served as East Africa program director for the covert human rights organization, Videre Est Credere, providing training and support to activists to record and publish video evidence of the human rights violations they face. Multi-year projects included short film-based media campaigns against persecution of Kenya's gay community and national sensititization for Al Shabab defectors attempting to return to their families.
Maasai women battle not only their culture, but their interior demons, to become East Africa’s first all-female anti-poaching unit.
RANGER is a story about the wilderness within us all. Set amongst Kenya’s Maasai community, an intimate and contemporary tale of self-discovery unfolds, as 12 women become East Africa’s first all-female anti-poaching unit. Upending the male-dominated reliance upon military-style training to make a wildlife ranger, Virginia, Liz, Momina, and Damaris instead undergo a 6-month rite of passage rooted in deep trauma-release and healing processes. Their journey triggers profound transformation, sending shockwaves through their communities.
A word to the spectacular natural theater of the film: RANGER largely takes place in the middle of the Laikipia plateau, on the slopes of the snow-capped Mount Kenya. It is a place of warriors, cattle, and goat-herding pastoralist tribes, horizons lined by acacia trees, plains roamed by giants. It’s where our species began. While it is a deeply human story, the film also pays homage to this precious place by letting the audience feel the natural symphony of rain, blistering heat, the thirst of land and animal alike, the crisp Laikipia night, and the exhilaration and vulnerability of sleeping in the bush under the moon and stars.
RANGER is a love letter to all of this, and a call to action to a new generation of heroes and heroines.
Austin Peck
Based in Kenya for over a decade, Austin Peck is a Nairobi-based film director whose works include the feature length documentary film GARDENERS OF EDEN, about Kenya’s David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and their fight against the ivory trade. (Netflix, 2015 Peabody Award Nominee, Audience Choice Award -Mill Valley Film Festival, Director’s Award - Sedona Film Festival. Acquired and released by Pivot/Participant Media (US television), National Geographic TV. Executive Producers Kristin Davis (Sex and the City) and Bryn Mooser (RYOT/XTR). Peck’s first feature-length documentary TOUGH BOND, a story about the gritty underworld of children from Kenya's northern pastoralist tribes living on Nairobi's streets, premiered in 2012 in competition at Berlinale (Berlin, Germany), with a North American premiere in competition at Hot Docs (Toronto, Canada).
More recently, Peck directed an 11-episode investigative news series in virtual reality titled The Big Picture (Huffington Post, Google and Hulu), featuring stories from occupied Palestine, Standing Rock, and anti-recidivism programs in California State Prisons. In 2016 and 2017, Peck directed a 6-hour investigative documentary series for KTV Kenya on police corruption, (Winner, Journalists of the Award, Kenya, 2017).
Between 2014-2017, Peck also served as East Africa program director for the covert human rights organization, Videre Est Credere, providing training and support to activists to record and publish video evidence of the human rights violations they face. Multi-year projects included short film-based media campaigns against persecution of Kenya's gay community and national sensititization for Al Shabab defectors attempting to return to their families.