Animals Are Beautiful People

Animals Are Beautiful People (1974) is a South African nature documentary you can watch online on iFILM. Writer, director, cinematographer and editor Jamie Uys spent years filming wildlife across the Namib Desert, the Kalahari, and the Okavango Delta, then cut the footage into something closer to a comedy sketch show than a traditional nature special.

Baboons pick pockets, elephants stage tugs-of-war, and a group of animals gets comprehensively drunk on fermented marula fruit. Uys never stoops to explain the joke: the editing does all the work, and the animals' dignity stays intact throughout. The film took the Golden Globe for Best Documentary in 1974. Uys went on to direct The Gods Must Be Crazy six years later. Stream Animals Are Beautiful People online on iFILM — a film that manages to be funny without ever making fun of its subjects.