Shangri-la: The Laws of Paradise
Finding a mate. Raising a family. Holding on to home.
3 × 60-minute natural history documentary series
In development · Seeking funding and international co-production partners
Extensive archive footage available
James Hilton imagined Shangri-la as a hidden valley where life exists in harmony. For the animals living among China’s great mountains and forests, paradise comes with conditions.
Built entirely from existing footage of China’s wildlife, Shangri-la: The Laws of Paradise explores three questions that shape every generation: can you find a partner, protect your young, and hold on to a place to live?
Intimate animal stories connect the episodes, revealing the effort, ingenuity, and relationships that sustain life in these landscapes.
Episode One: Can You Find the Other Half?
A female Skywalker gibbon sings into a fragmented forest. A male lives beyond the trees, but the broken canopy keeps them apart. Scientists use a mobile phone to let them hear one another. Making contact is only the first step.
Elsewhere, a male giant panda follows a female’s call, only to find himself ignored as rivals arrive. A rhinoceros beetle fights for a mate, a Chinese monal struggles to keep his dancing stage, and a female toad must cross a busy road to reach a calling male.
Every species has its approach, but success is never guaranteed. Even a bonded pair of red-crowned cranes continues to dance together. Finding a partner begins a relationship that must be maintained.
Episode Two: Can You Protect the Children?
Pika pups emerge from their burrow into a world watched by predators. They must learn quickly: when the alarm sounds, get underground.
In a golden snub-nosed monkey troop, snow and hunger expose a failure of leadership. The alpha female’s interest in a challenger could change the future of every youngster.
A rescued elephant and her calf seek acceptance from a wild herd. A white-headed langur father guards his baby against predators and rival males. An antelope mother searches for a calf lost during migration.
For an orphaned white-cheeked gibbon named Yuan Yuan, survival depends on finding a new family willing to take him in.
Episode Three: Can You Hold On to Home?
An elephant family leaves the forest for roads, buildings, and farmland. When a calf becomes trapped in a pool, the matriarch faces another challenge in the search for a route home.
A young Yunnan snub-nosed monkey confronts his first winter. Lao Bai, a former troop leader, waits in the cold and helps guide him back to his mother. Elsewhere, gibbons and monkeys share the same forest.
Smaller lives reveal different strategies: cordyceps fungi consume their hosts, cave larvae suspend glittering traps, and a slow loris feeds on toxic insects.
Leaving, staying, sharing, or surviving through unusual adaptations, each animal must find its own way to keep a place in the world.
An Invitation to Collaborate
Shangri-la: The Laws of Paradise brings existing wildlife footage together around the challenges of partnership, parenthood, and belonging.
We are seeking funders and international co-production partners to bring this three-part series to audiences worldwide.
Contact Primal Films to request the full proposal and discuss a potential partnership.