Rhino horn trafficking subject of winning documentary

Rhino Dollars, a two-year investigative documentary on the global trafficking of rhino horn, received a Grand Prix Award in Documentary at the 2019 Deauville Green Awards in France in June. The film was made possible by the director, Olivia Mokiejewski, TV Press Productions and ARTE, the non-commercial European culture channel. 
Filmed largely in South Africa and Asia, Rhino Dollars portrays the trafficking of rhino horn and highlights the transnationality of this crime. The film sets out in March 2017, when Vince, a Southern white rhinoceros, was killed by poachers at the Thoiry Zoo, near Paris. This brought the daily threat to the species in their natural habitats to the very heart of Europe.
The producers took nearly two years to follow the trail of this global crime from source to destination and the profits that it yields for the traffickers and dealers. The film exposes that the trafficking of rhino horn is not only an outrageous crime against a threatened species (all subspecies of rhinoceros rank from vulnerable to critically endangered) but also truly qualifies as a form of transnational organized crime.
Lee Gluckman, chairman of US International Film & Video Festival, served on the Docu jury at Deauville. Read more about Deauville winners at https://www.deauvillegreenawards.com/en/competition/edition-2019.