“Wild: Life, Death and Love in a Wildlife Hospital” and “Waiting for Giraffes,” documentaries paired for a double bill opening Wednesday at Film Forum, are both relatively short and feature animals and Middle Eastern settings, but they take different approaches. “Wild” is a gentle, observational movie for animal-lovers; “Waiting for Giraffes” has its eye on geopolitical issues.
“Wild” is a largely fly-on-the-wall-style portrait of an Israeli veterinary hospital where animals hit by cars or shot, for example, are tenderly rehabilitated.
The directors, Uriel Sinai and Danel Elpeleg, are interested not only in the animals but also in the humans who look after them. Shmulik Landau, a tireless caretaker, patiently helps an unsteady young gazelle stay on her feet and eases her pain with medication and massages. (He died in 2017, and the movie is dedicated to him.) The devoted veterinarian Ariela Rosenzweig Bueler persists in finding an obstruction in a hyena’s digestive tract, even when her colleagues are about to give up. And confronted with a wild ass who has suffered a shattered bone, she explores options for healing an animal who might otherwise need to be euthanized.
The charms of “Wild” are minor, lying mainly in the pleasure of watching the animals and the big-hearted professionals devoted to them.
“Waiting for Giraffes,” at least initially, seems to have a broader scope. It follows Dr. Sami Khader, a Palestinian veterinarian at the Qalqilya Zoo in the West Bank, who is seeking to boost his institution’s visibility and access to animals by gaining admission to the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria.
The film, by the Italian-born director Marco De Stefanis, opens by quoting the organization’s standards on enclosures, which should be built “to avoid the risk of persistent and unresolved conflict.” The excerpt offers an obvious metaphor for the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The title refers to potential replacements for a giraffe the zoo had that died. Various people onscreen share the reasons they have heard for its death, which may have been connected to violence in the region.
But “Waiting for Giraffes” doesn’t lean hard into its occupation-as-a-zoo theme. It is largely devoted to earnestly celebrating Khader’s mission. He takes seriously a recommendation that his job is to bring the animal kingdom to West Bank Palestinians whose travel is controlled by the miles of barriers Israel has erected.
“We can’t visit the sea,” a prospective zoo visitor says. “An aquarium with fish would be a compensation.”
Waiting for Giraffes
Not rated. In Arabic, with English subtitles. Running time: 55 minutes.
Wild: Life, Death and Love in a Wildlife Hospital
Not rated. In Hebrew, with English subtitles. Running time: 59 minutes.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
