Another year older (….and perhaps wiser!)
As 2025 ends, its great to look back on some of the highlights from 2025 for the team at Maramedia.
Early 2025 saw us attend the Washington DC Environmental Film Festival where “A Life Among Elephants” was awarded the prestigious Stone award for outstanding artistry (check out some of the publicity here). It was a fantastic festival showcasing some amazing documentaries and we were thrilled to be honoured and to have our US theatrical premier at the renowned American Film Theatre. The film then went on to tour both the West and East coast of the US playing to sell out audiences, raising both awareness and important funds for elephant conservation. It also had a theatrical premier in Nairobi Kenya and played at CITES in Uzbekistan. We very much enjoyed working with ARTE France on the production of the film which is currently streaming on UK Channel 4, Curiosity Stream USA, SBS Australia and many other channels across the world. The project has been a huge success as a collaboration between Maramedia and Save The Elephants. It was also a great honour to be invited talk more about this alongside other leading NGOs at the wonderful Jackson Wild festival in the autumn.
Later in the Spring we headed to the amazing NEWF congress – a positive forward-thinking congress in South Africa putting African storytellers at the heart of wildlife and environmental filmmaking – If you don’t already know of this energetic pool of creative talent then do check them out! We formed some important connections and were able to put into practise straight away on our next project.. - A film very close to our heart that has been in development for many years. It tells such an important story about our closest animal relatives and production has been full on during the year with an exciting new partnership - we can’t wait to tell you more about it very soon!
Our development too has continued at a pace and we were thrilled to be awarded a slate development from Screen Scotland to support some important projects – again, we are looking forward to sharing some of them with you in early 2026!
A surprisingly warm and sunny summer in Scotland was the setting for a new experience for us - a film showcase at the world renowned Edinburgh Fringe festival where we were able to bring together an esteemed panel of scientists alongside our filmmakers to discuss important issues about Elephant conservation alongside another packed screening for A Life Among Elephants
Our new film The Pigeon Hustle was broadcast across the world starting with ORF in Austria, Arte in France/Germany and the USA’s PBS Nature in November. Nature also collaborated with Minecraft to create PLANET PIGEON - a series of educational games based on the film which are available globally. The film has been a great success everywhere shining a light among one of our most overlooked wild neighbours. Take a look at the making of the film here
The media landscape of course is shifting causing issues for our entire industry but is creating new opportunities and we were able to attend some useful training in the form of TRC’s fantastic ‘Future Proof’ course to update our team along with attending some new inspiring conferences including digital content London from Tellycast building up our knowledge in this brave new world and celebrating our Highlands series reaching over 9 million views on ITVs our Our World platform.
As always festivals are such an important chance to meet and collaborate and we were also pleased to attend Jackson, Wildscreen, Sunnyside and Innsbruck Nature Film festival alongside DCEFF and NEWF.
The planet is in crisis ecologically and much of our industry is changing beyond recognition effecting freelancers especially – we have tried to support as many as we are able along with training but understand how difficult it is for all our industry. However, we will always need good storytellers to engage us and inspiring pioneering conservationists and scientists to guide us. We were so sad to hear of the passing of both Jane Goodall and Iain Douglas Hamilton this year – such figureheads in understanding and fighting for the natural world and are honoured to have been able to make a film about Iain’s amazing life and work. https://youtu.be/nT2Nml6E5o0
Meeting like-minded people and finding creative ways to tells stories about the natural world is what drives us each day. And we are excited about next year and look forward to working with all the amazing people across the world within our uniquely creative and evolving industry.
To quote Jane Goodall, “Every single one of us makes an impact on this planet every single day and we get to choose what kind of difference we make.”
Wishing you all warm seasons greetings and we very much look forward to next year.
All the team at Maramedia x
Take a look at some of our favourite moments from the year…
