Director/Director of Photography: Jonathan Finnigan
Executive Producers: Cher, Phil Fairclough, Mike Kemp
Writers: Jonathan Finnigan and Phil Fairclough
Makeup: Francesca Tolot
Hair:  Serena Radaelli (from Dear Mom, Love Cher and The Farewell Tour special)
Assistant: Jennifer Ruiz
Narrator: Nick Daley
Aired: 22 April 2021 (Smithsonian Channel and Paramount+)
Trailer for the special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brf7Mn51znw

This was the third documentary special for Cher. But unlike 1998’s Sonny and Me: Cher Remembers and 2013’s Dear Mom, Love Cher special, this was not a picture-reel and interview documentary about a person in Cher’s life, but a documentary following the transport of Kavaan the elephant from a Pakistani zoo to a Cambodian elephant sanctuary. Actually, this documentary isn’t even really about Cher (or even featuring Cher that much), despite the title. She just helped coordinate the rescue and participated as a witness to the unprecedented relocation. Arguably, without her the documentary would not have been made but she’s hardly the star of it.

And you can either see this as opportunistic involvement by Cher or her lending her fame to “get ‘er done.” From Cher’s low-key and modest performance in the documentary, I am solidly on the side of this being a necessary fame-assist.

Kavaan and Cher even share top billing.

Because this was a Streaming Only movie, it was a challenge to take screenshots which is why these are all so low rent.

So to begin with Cher and elephants go way back to her childhood. The first movie she ever saw was Walt Disney’s Dumbo and that movie left her with a desire to be in show business, so the circus element of her shows shouldn’t surprise us. Then she bonded with the elephant Margie in the Tarzan spoof of the movie she did with Sonny, Good Times. Then there was her big elephant effigy in the The Farewell Tour.

“Song for the Lonely” plays while the narrator explains how The Goddess of Pop got involved in this global campaign to free Kavaan, a presumed-to-be dangerous and unpredictable Asian elephant. This whole thing happened in the middle of the COVID pandemic and involved an array of people to secure the elephant’s freedom and figure out how to transport him on a plane at great risk to him and all the other plan passengers.

The documentary begins with the story of an American vet visiting her family in Pakistan in 2015 and while there making a trip to the Islamabad Zoo. She talks about how she saw Kavaan there, a 35-year old bull elephant who was living in very bad conditions. His only companion, Saheli, had already died at age 22 from neglect, specifically gangrene that developed on her foot due to being chained up. (They show graphic death photos of Saheli). The elephants were unable to bathe or move.

Kavaan had also previously killed two of his keepers. But he was the zoo’s star attraction due to his rocking behavior, characterized as dancing by the zoo but what was really a coping disorder that the vet, Dr. Samar Khan, recognized. She said the rocking was the result of “terrible boredom.” Elephants are social and intelligent animals and he was experiencing mental and physical torment, Khan said.

We learn that Kavaan had been sent to Pakistan as a baby elephant gift from Sri Lanka to the president’s daughter. Once he grew too big, he ended up at the zoo.

Boo Sri Lanka.

Anyway, Dr Khan was upset about all this and so she stared a #FreeKavaan campaign with a change.org petition and a Facebook page. Overnight her Facebook page exploded and attracted the interest of a Pakistani-expat living in Canada named Anika Sleem, who builds up more momentum for Kavaan on Twitter. Then Cher fans start “inundating” Cher with pleas for help Kavaan on Twitter and Cher eventually responds to Sleem.

Cher looks like she’s interviewed from her Malibu house. She recalls thinking, “I can’t save an elephant in Pakistan. I have no street cred. How am I gonna do this?”

Well, it turns out years ago Cher met Bob Geldof’s manager, Mark Cowne, when they both got in the wrong limo after an event. (Cher explained this once outside of this documentary.) But she remembered her conversation with Cowne and that he was involved in saving elephants in South Africa. So she called him up and he agreed to go visit Kavaan right away.

Mark Cowne calls Cher “a great friend” and says when she asked him to investigate he said, “of course I said yes.”

Cowne visits Kavaan in Pakistan and says he sees a “totally broken animal.” Cher also talks about seeing terrible pictures of Kavaan shackled and in a small shed. “I was pissed off, too,” Cher says.

Cowne then appeals to the zoo officials, asking that Kavaan be given water in his pool, for them to take the chains off and give him a roof for his shed. And to give him something to play with. Cher says, “and they did it.”

And then two years go by and nothing else improves, including Kavaan’s sad rocking back and forth. So in 2018, Mark Cowne and Cher launch the non-profit Free the Wild together and Cher begins a Twitter campaign. She tries to beg and cajole the Pakistan government to let Kavaan go.

She releases the fundraising song, “Walls.” (This song came out during Donald Trump’s first presidential term with all his “build a wall” insanity and so the song felt like it had a double meaning at the time.) The song was written by Jem Cooke, Mark Taylor, and Patrick Mascall and produced by Mark Taylor.

But Cher says, “That didn’t seem to help.”

Kavaan’s diet was still terrible and he was still alone in the squalid pen, Cher says. She talks about how emotional and family oriented elephants are. “Few zoos can properly care for elephants.”

(Cher is now still trying to fight for the release of elephants Billy and Tina first with a recent lawsuit filed to prevent their removal from the L.A. Zoo to a worse zoo instead of a sancturary and then Free the Wild reporting that the two elephants were snuck out to the Tulsa zoo in the middle of the night on 20 May 2025.)

Then in 2020, the Pakistani lawyer, Owaid Awan takes the Pakistani zoo to court. The lawsuit demands the zoo let Kavaan go to a better place. He says Cher was a party in the petition.

They succeeded in the lawsuit, a landmark president in Pakistan for animal rights. The High Court ruled that not only would Kavaan need to be relocated but the whole zoo would need to be shut down. Which turned out to be a “logistical nightmare” because they only had 30 days and it was the summer of 2020, the middle of the COVID global pandemic.

Even Cher was worried about traveling during COVID but they all decided to risk it. Cher said, “we have to be responsive.” Free the Wild then spent time searching for a new home for Kavaan and found a woman named Lek Chailert, known as Thailand’s “Elephant Whisperer,” and who founded Save Elephant Foundation. She had 200 elephants in her Thailand sanctuary. She talks about how taking baby elephants taken away from their mothers is the worst thing for elephants.

Boo Sri Lanka, boo!

Chailert and her husband, Derek Thompson, then made space for Kavaan at their sister-sanctuary in Cambodia. He would be given a small space (less than an acre) to acclimate in part of a large, protected sanctuary forest. He would see his first other elephant peoples there in eight years.

Cowne talks about the sanctuary being the best place for him but a “logistical nightmare” to get him there. Kavaan would have to fly seven hours by plane and then four hours by truck.

Cowne talked about how they would need a massive aircraft, a big cargo plane and “how the hell are we gonna get that now?”

They would also need to build a crate strong enough for Kavaan and train him to get in it. That’s when Free the Wild hooked up with Four Paws Animal Rescue. They were already at the zoo relocating all the other animals. Their leader, Dr. Amir Khalil, was known as “the war vet,” having rescued animals out of war zones in Syria, Iraq, Libiya and the Gaza Strip.

And this is where the documentary starts covering the day-to-day work of Dr. Khalil who is, in my mind, the real star of the show. They show him working with Kavaan every day to get him in the right frame of mind for such a perilous journey. Khalil says, “he was an angry guy” and that he hated human beings. “He saw us as monsters” for how zoo-keepers treated him for 35 years and how they treated his lady-friend Saheli, ultimately killing her.

First Khalil put Kavaan on a diet and he shed 500 pounds but needed to shed even more because the crate they needed was so heavy and the gross weight on the plane couldn’t exceed 10 tons. They found a Russian Ilyushin II-76 plane to use to fly Kavaan from Pakistan to Cambodia.

They were given August to November to train Kavaan. (That’s more than the 30 days, so something must have changed there.) They started building his create, which needed to be big enough for him to want to get inside it willingly but tight enough to restrain him and strong enough not to break if he got agitated and wanted to break something.

Experts weigh in on the create-building process and how to elephant-proof it. The makers accidentally painted an African elephant on the door and had to redo that. (Would Kavaan be offended?) Usually it takes four to six weeks to crate train elephants but Khalil only had14 days. They sat the crate in his enclosure overnight so Kavaan could acclimate to it but they forgot to take the doors off, a “fatal mistake.”

By morning, Kavaan has destroyed the crate (maybe he didn’t like his painted likeness) and a new, stronger one then had to be built with thicker material and better welding. The narrator says, “their lives on the plane will depend upon it.” The new crate would get no fancy paint job. It will say #FreeKavaan and he’ll like it!

Khalil wastes no time though, using the trashed crate to start training Kavaan. Khalil uses fruit snacks and music to get Kavaan interested in the crate. What’s his favorite song? Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”

Several team members get COVID.

Meanwhile, Kavaan goes into Musth, a mating condition that shoots up boy-elephant testosterone by 60 percent and lasts for three to four weeks. (That’s all we need.) Musth makes male elephants hyper-aggressive and deadly. But the team had no choice but to continue. They worried the plane noises could set him off so they acclimated him to those noises. Khalil said it was very dangerous to even be training Kavaan during Musth and that likely Kavaan saw Khalil as an alpha-threat. The whole condition puts the airlift in jeopardy.

Sigh. Boys.

But they get Kavaan ready and on 28 November 2020, Cher leaves Los Angeles (it looks like with her friend Paulette). They take video at the airport.

Meanwhile, Kavaan is given meds to calm his testosterone surge and curb his aggression. Mark Cowne arrives from London to see Kavaan off and he gets too close to Kavaan who knocks him and another person over violently with his trunk. Cowne says, “it was my fault.” He’s okay.

A snippet of Cher’s song “Believe” plays while we see the animated map of Cher traveling 24 hours nonstop from Los Angeles to London and then to Islamabad. We see Cher going from car to car and arriving at the zoo with great anticipation. (This elephant doesn’t know what a lucky pacaderm he is right now.)

When Cher gets there she says everyone is surprised to see her there. “I was in Islamabad and everyone was saying ‘we didn’t expect you to come.'”

She meets Dr. Khalil on camera. He welcomes her and asks her if she believes in miracles. They show Kavaan “dancing” to “Believe.” (That’s a little awkward.) Cher talks about walking the long road into the zoo and her first sight of Kavaan (like he’s an icon such as herself). “He’s so brown and beautiful and rusty….and then, he’s so big and he’s not even a big elephant….elephants are gigantic.”

She remarks on his beautiful eyes. She asks Khalil if Kavaan stops rocking at night or when people aren’t looking. No, Khalil says, he rocks “24/7.”

Khalil knows two ways that Cher can bond with Kavaan: with food (Cher says, “I like watermelon, too”) and music. (This sounds like me, too.) Khalil and Cher sing Kavaan his favorite song. Yes, Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” Cher sings with her hands in her pockets. She knows the words, too. Is this because she’s a consummate professional or did she practice learning the song during the 24-hours of travel? In any case, Kavaan seems to like it. He munches away on leaves and flaps his ears. “He loves that song,” Cher says. (This elephant fellow does not know how lucky is right now!)

Cher remarks on what a cute personality he has. (He’s still in Musth and probably flirting with her.)

Dr. Khalil then talks about how, in all his years of rescuing, Kavaan is the only animal he’s ever gotten attached to. In fact, it’s a rule of of his not to bond with the animals. “I love them, I care for them. I rescue them, but I never bond.”

The new crate arrives which is sturdier and smaller, much less pretty. Kavaan explores it. Cher stands in the training crate as one of the rescuers explains the situation to her. She has questions. They talk about sedation, logistics and will people on the plane keep checking on him. They will.

They have a late night fireside meeting led by Dr. Khalil. Cher sits next to Mark Cowne. He tells them the team will start at 6 a.m. the next day. Cher will fly ahead and meet them there. Khalil says, “Cher, I will see you in Cambodia.” (If this elephant even knew things like this were being said! “Cher, I will see you in Cambodia.”)

There is high anxiety around the whole team the next day. “Immense pressure.” A hoard of media arrives and are kept behind a fence. Tweets fly.

Dr. Khalil coaxes Kavaan into the training crate for sedation by singing “My Way.”  A specialist in animal sedation fires a sedative into Kavaan’s ass. It will take 20 minutes to take effect, he says. They give Kavaan leaves to keep him calm before the next step. But the noise from Kavaan’s paparazzi is not something they had thought to even acclimate him for and so Dr. Khalil pleads with all the photographers to be quiet. They all need to keep quiet.

The next step is get Kavaan to back himself up into the new, traveling crate. Kavaan is still in Musth and a team of people are pulling him with ropes. But he does it. “He went in beautifully.” Dr. Khalil speculates this is because “he understood we were working for him.”

Aww!

Cher says she didn’t think he’d go into the crate. It’s nighttime by now. The put the crate on the plane which is “big enough to swallow a school bus,” the narrator says. The plane is “designed to deliver cargo to remote areas.” Kavaan “could throw the whole plane off balance” by swaying in his crate, which he is doing while they load him. They give him sugar cane snacks to get him to stop.

Kavaan will have to stand for seven hours. (Sounds like my one day at the music festival Cochella.) He has to stay awake enough to stand that long but sedate enough to be relaxed about it. (I wish I had access to this sedative at Cochella.)

The team has tried to anticipate all the possible Kavaanigans, trying to think like en elephant: “shat can I bend…open….or break.” Dr. Khalil says he feels responsible for Kavaan’s life. “Will he survive the trip?”

Cher’s song “Believe” plays while the plane is landing the next morning. Cher is waiting and she says, “people are so excited to see him.”

Another challenge was that the airport nearest to the sanctuary was closed due to COVID. A local and influential business man, Hok Song, who persuaded the government to open the airport. Cher says, “we wouldn’t have gotten any thing done in Cambodia without Mr. Song.” His name could be Hong. I hear them say Hong but the credits say Song.

Before Kavaan deplanes, a team of monks blesses him. The narrator says he “behaved very well.”

Derek Thompson from the sanctuary is there to load Kavaan’s crate on to the flatbed truck for the four hour drive. Cher describes Thompson’s heroics riding on the outside of the flatbed and checking on Kavaan the whole time. Cher was behind the flatbed in the vehicle convoy and worried Thompson would fall off. She says, “Derek was amazing.”

By the time they arrive at the sanctuary it is nighttime again. Kavaan gets out of the crate and the narrator says he is “punch drunk from the flight.” Cher says Kavaan saw his shelter and was “so calm.” Cher goes on to say how he seemed interested in everything, checking out everything in his enclosure. “I saw a different elephant.”

Thompson tells Cher Kavaan will eventually be released into 30-thousand acres of tropical forest, which he will be able to explore.

But first he has to settle into his temporary enclosure. There are three females next door who are checking out the new bull.  Thompson can tell they are talking. Cher asks how elephants talk because you can’t hear anything. Thompson says they use sub-perception to communicate and that if you feel their heads, you can feel the vibrations of their talking. “It takes time,” Thompson says for the elephants to acclimate to each other.

Thompson and Cher are very flirty with each other. Cher plays with her hair while they talk. Thompson touches his face and smiles alot. Maybe Thompson is in Musth too. Maybe Cher is in…ok, I’ll stop.

They show footage of Kavaan bathing in the dust and Thompson explains that it’s like a spa for them. The dust provides sun protection, keeps them warm and the bugs off.

Thompson admits he has placed some of Kavaan’s poop into the lady elephants enclosure and this has gotten the girls twittering. Thompson says, “they talked and talked and talked about it.” He says you can “draw a lot of info” from poop if you’re an elephant.

Kavaan touches trunks with one of the ladies. Thompson can tell “he’s playing coy.” (What a player!) But this is a good sign, “It’s gonna work,” Thompson says. Cher smiles and says, “send me pictures.” “Absolutely,” Thompson says and it’s not just the elephants who are being coquettish here.

Dr. Khalil says a tearful goodbye to Kavaan. They have spent three months together. “I lose my happiness,” Khalil says. “I am sad to leave him.” He salutes and says a final, “thank you” to Kavaan. It’s very moving.

Khalil says he is immensely proud of the experience. The narrator then talks about the nearby  Hindu-Buddhist temple Angor Wat and how many elephants were used to build it and killed during the process. It’s symbolic for how far we’ve come in animal rights. While her song “Song for the Lonely” plays, Cher is seen visiting Angor Wat in a beautiful red outfit.

The narrator talks about the plight of elephants around the world and the power of social media as a tool to save them, in this case galvanizing a team of elephant and Cher fans to save Kavaan. This is a good point. We are really struggling now (we, as in me) with the worst effects of social media and we sometimes forget the good it can do.

We’re back to the vet who got everything in motion at the beginning of the documentary. Dr Khan  talks about “the power of the people.”

We then skip to three months later when Cher is calling Thompson from her Malibu house to check up on Kavaan. “How’s my boy,” Cher asks. Thompson tells her that he is one of the calmest bull elephants he as ever known and that “he seems really happy.” Cher gives a big smile when Thompson lets her Facetime with Kavaan.

There’s one interesting shot where you can see Cher at home with the production setup.

Thompson says Kavaan has met the ladies but he is more into eating.

(Figures.)

As the credits roll Cher says, “This is like a fairy tale ending. You know when they kiss at the end?” (Except he’s kissing leaves and not ladies.)

Cher talks about how this has given her confidence to go on saving other elephants. “I now know I can do something like that, so I’m gonna continue.”

 

Highlights: The whole thing is well made and explained with a continuing sense of the stakes involved and the drama of it all. I loved the drone footage that set the scenes in both Pakistan and Cambodia. Too bad we didn’t have a drone in L.A. following Cher through the airport.

🙂

Lowlight: There’s no DVD yet.