Ivory. A Crime Story

Ivory. A Crime Story is a condemnatory film about the ongoing massacre of African elephants. It attacks a complex web of culprits, from the Chinese government and Buddhist monks to corrupt African high-officials, toothless NGOs and secretive Chinese businessmen, building fortunes off of an ever-increasing demand for ivory which has brought one of the world’s most intelligent animals to the brink of extinction.

This investigative film is produced and written by Sergey Yastrzhembsky, a career diplomat who was the voice of the Kremlin under President Boris Yeltsin and served current president Vladimir Putin as special envoy to Brussels and spokesman on Chechnya. Since leaving politics in 2008 and distancing himself from the Kremlin, Sergey Yastrzhembsky has dedicated his life to photography and filmmaking, focusing mainly on Africa. He produced a series of more than 60 documentary films on endangered nations, broadcast on several Russian television channels from 2009 to 2015. His full-length film “Africa. Blood and Beauty” was awarded the Golden Eagle Prize by the National Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Russia. Ivory. A Crime Story, which took three years to shoot in more than 30 countries, seeks to challenge governments and organizations who are proving incapable of stopping the bloody business of ivory.