Filmmaker Patricia Sims passionately explores whether we can peacefully coexist with elephants who never forget, and whether new strategies to ease the plight of the endangered Asian elephant and the deteriorating condition of human-elephant relations can more broadly be applied to our relations with each other.

On the streets of Bangkok a young man and his elephant eke out an existence busking for tourists in the night. In this urban jungle they share a life of poverty and hardship where all they have is each other – but is this the right place for any elephant to be? Their story leads us into a complex world of intrigue and struggle, where the state of human-elephant relations and traditions in modern society unfold, raising questions about a future where elephants and humans can coexist.

THE MISSION

For the past two years we have been researching and developing Elephants Never Forget with the dream to create an inspirational feature film that will awaken people to the troubled world of the Asian elephant and their relationship with humans. It is said that elephants may be more like us than any other creature - and that they never forget. For over 4,000 years elephants have served us in warfare, as entertainers, as workers, and sometimes as friends. Today they are endangered on many fronts that include habitat destruction, human-elephant conflict, poaching, mistreatment, and exploitation. With these threats come the potential loss of an animal with an intelligence and memory from which we may have much to learn. In this film our intention is to investigate what the positive solutions can be for elephants and the people whose lives they affect, through a story that intimately portrays the modern human-elephant relationship yet also reflects our relationship with other creatures, and each other. In fact, this is a story about us.