Ozi: Voice of the Forest is an animated film with an ecological message. Its protagonist, Ozi, is a young orangutan who is separated from her parents during a forest fire. She finds refuge in a sanctuary where she learns sign language. But when she hears her parents are alive, she sets off to find them.
Orangutans are humans' closest relatives in the animal world. They are a critically endangered species and live only in the Pacific, principally on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. There are fewer than 120,000 orangutans left in the wild and their habitat is threatened by human activity: the rainforests they live in are being cut down to create palm oil plantations to feed our desire for shampoo, chocolate spreads and cosmetics. That is the situation in the film, which is co-produced by actor Leo DiCaprio, well-known for his commitment to the environment.
The film trailer will allow pupils to piece together the story. We see wildfires, Ozi explaining her life in the sanctuary she calls an orphanage, and her realisation she can and must try to save her parents and habitat. It introduces her friends, a monkey called Chance and a rhinoceros called Honkys. Pupils can make hypotheses about the place her parents are being kept and what the company GreenZar is doing taht is "destroying our island".
This very short introductory scene narrated by Hugh Bonneville would be great for anticipation: how could this tiny ape "change the world"?
This short clip entitled "Home Sweet Home" shows the paradisical life Ozi had as baby with her parents in the rainforest. It's good for revising family vocabulary.
This clip shows Ozi rediscovering the forest with Chance after living in the human world. (She has a tablet to take photos because she has become an influencer, helping the charity that helped her teach the world about he species.)
Going Further
For more about orangutans, check out this article on the Greenpeace site, "10 Amazing Facts About Orangutans". And this article from the WWF site explains what products contain palm oil and how to find responsibly-produced palm-oil products.
This film would make a great complement to Shine Bright 5e
SnapFile 8 Save Rang-Tan, a beautiful animated poem about saving orangutan habitat created by Greenpeace and narrated by Emma Thompson.
Ozi: Voice of the Forest
On general release 2 April 2025
Tag(s) : "American cinema" "animals" "animated film" "conservation" "ecology" "EDD" "orangutans" "Shine bright 5e" "survival"