At the end of a marathon 2-year project, ADI‘s ‘Spirit of Freedom’ reached its spectacular conclusion this month, with the arrival in South Africa of 33 lions rescued from the brutality of circuses in Colombia and Peru. We’ve been following the whole campaign and were in South Africa to film the lions taking their first steps on African soil.

We’ve had the privilege of working with ADI for just over 6 years, following their incredible work as they campaign for animal rights across the globe, and focusing in particular on animal rescues in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru. As part of an amazing international team we’ve documented the highs and lows, providing a steady stream of still images and video to help promote, publicise and fund-raise. As the stories have unfolded we’ve worked with ADI’s media team to share them with an international audience; short form videos content is uploaded to Youtube with individual videos receiving over 7 million views. The full story of the 2010 Bolivian rescue was told through ‘Lion Ark’ a feature-length documentary that has won 11 awards at international film festivals and is currently being distributed by ITV. Our footage of the ‘Spirit of Freedom’ campaign will be turned into a series for TV but in the meantime you can see some of it in this South African news piece or read a great account here on the Huffington Post. More importantly the 33 are now settling in to a well earned retirement under the African sun at the Emoya Big Cat Sanctuary in Limpopo, South Africa.