FRAMES FOR A CAUSE

Goa-born Malaika Vaz wanted to be a wildlife filmmaker since she was five. At 24, not only is she living the life she dreamt of, but also making waves along the way.

Not many five-year-olds know of Steve Irwin, the late Australian wildlife conservationist and TV personality, let alone be inspired by him to shape their lives. But Malaika Vaz was no ordinary five-year-old. As a child, she decided she wanted to do what Irwin did on TV.

Vaz followed through and went on to pursue a career in wildlife filmmaking. She dropped out of college to work as a wildlife researcher with a film production company. “I couldn’t imagine any [other] job being more perfect for me,” says Vaz.

But the journey to be a wildlife filmmaker in India doesn’t go through a well-paved road. There are no speciality schools, and only a handful of professionals to emulate. So, working with filmmakers shaped her training. “Making a film is an iterative process, and the more you practise, the better you get,” she explains.

When it came to choosing the stories she wanted to tell, there were no two ways. Adventure has been a big part of Vaz’s lifestyle; she’s a pro at cross-country horse riding, windsurfing, scuba diving, and mountaineering. “But I realised that adventure means nothing if we ignore the protection of the habitats we explore,” she says. “This is what fuels my need to tell stories about the challenges our planet faces and the solutions that can make a difference.”

So far, the National Youth Awardee has worked on around 20 films. Her favourite projects include the Green Oscar-nominated Peng Yu Sai, an investigative documentary about the illegal trade of manta rays; Living With Predators, a three-part series that explores how communities and big cats coexist in India; and On The Brink, in which she explores various endangered species in India, including red pandas in the Northeast. She has gone undercover in the biggest wildlife markets in China, crawled deep into bat caves, and tracked lions on foot. But some of her wildest experiences have taken place in the ocean. “I was recently filming with tiger sharks near a tiny island in the Maldives. I was focussed on filming three massive sharks right when I felt something nudge me in the back. I turned around and saw another massive tiger shark gently prodding my scuba cylinder to figure out what I was.”

Currently, Vaz is making a virtualreality film on Himalayan black bears in Kashmir, while also working on projects for her own production house, Untamed Planet (untamedplanet.in).

On the bucket list: Diving and filming in the Galápagos Islands; filming mountain gorillas in Uganda