IMAX's latest documentary highlights China's Asian elephants

The Elephant Odyssey, the first original IMAX documentary focusing on Asian elephants in China, premiered in Beijing on Oct 21, bringing the animals' stories to the big screen.

The film follows two parallel storylines. One traces a herd of 15 wild elephants' 1,300-kilometer northward migration across Southwest China's Yunnan province over 17 months, from March 2020 to August 2021. The other documents Ah Bao, a male Asian elephant that was taken into care for six years after wandering into the bustling streets of Pu'er in 2018, and his eventual return to the wild.

Beyond the herd's widely followed journey, the documentary explores wildlife conservation challenges, including how researchers monitor wild elephants, rescue workers care for injured or separated animals, and local communities seek ways to coexist with them.

The film continues IMAX's tradition of science documentaries, which began with Tiger Child in 1970, the company's first film that premiered at the Japan World Exposition (Expo '70) in Osaka. Over the past five decades, IMAX cameras have captured environments ranging from the deep ocean and rainforests to the polar regions and outer space. Pandas, for example, documented efforts to return captive-bred giant pandas to the wild in China.

Rather than relying on classroom-style lectures, documentaries often use real animals, people and missions to introduce complex scientific topics. In The Elephant Odyssey, the elephants' journeys serve as a window for audiences to learn about wildlife monitoring, habitat protection and human-elephant coexistence.

Daniel Manwaring, CEO of IMAX China, said the film marks a further expansion of the company's role from theatrical exhibition to original content production, showcasing its strengths in technology, content and cinema.

"Filming on IMAX in Yunnan was the adventure of a lifetime. Capturing Ah Bao and his release that morning is a memory I will never forget. I hope that you (the audience) will feel the same sense of awe, wonder and magic that we all felt," said Alice Gu, the film's director, in a recorded video.

The feature will be released on Oct 23.