Mia and the White Lion

2018
6.8
Mia and the White Lion
Poster Mia and the White Lion

Title: Mia and the White Lion

Original Title: L'enfant et le lion blanc

Year: 2018

Info

Release Dates

  • United States: April 12 2019

Plot

Mia's life changes completely when her family decides to leave London and move to Africa to take care a lion farm. At the beginning, she is really angry about it, until she meets Charlie, a white lion with whom she creates a unbreakable bond. When the lion turns three years old, Mia finds out about a really dark secret that her father is hiding; so she decides to run away with Charlie to avoid that he suffers any harm. Both set out in an aventure in the African Savannah, looking for a place where Charlie can live in freedom.

The movie is directed by Gilles de Maistre. It was filmed in three years. The cast is formed by Mélanie Laurent ('Inglorious Bastards'), Langley Kirkwood ('Banshee') and Daniah de Villiers, who will be incarnating the main character.

Cast

Director:

Gilles de MaistreGilles de Maistre

Photos

Mia and the White Lion
Mia and the White Lion
Mia and the White Lion
Mia and the White Lion
Mia and the White Lion
Mia and the White Lion
Mia and the White Lion
Mia and the White Lion

Trivia

Three years growing up together

Upon getting the idea for the film, co-writer/director Gilles de Maistre asked specialist Kevin Richardson about the possibility of filming a child with a lion. He was told that it would be impossible, as the only way for the lion not to harm the child would be that they grow up together, a three year process for a lion and much too long for a film shoot. Undeterred, de Maistre found Daniah De Villiers a young, South African girl already familiar with lions to grow up with the titular white lion cub, and shot the film over two and half years, from May 2015 to December 2017, with the other actors regularly flying in to shoot their scenes.

Real story

The idea of 'Mia and the White Lion' came to Gilles de Maistre while he was making a television documentary on the unique friendship between children and wild animals around the world. In South Africa, he meets a boy whose parents had a lion farm. Under the guise of preserving them, they actually resold them for hunting in pens.

Teenage lion

Filming was normal until the lion was a year and a half old. There, the team has folded in cages because lions go through 2 years a period that can be likened to adolescence.

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