the project

Equator from the air: south east Asia

BBC Two

At a critical moment for the natural world, Gordon Buchanan takes to the skies above South East Asia to reveal how one of the planet’s fastest-changing regions looks from a completely new perspective.

Directed by Anne Sommerfield, the concluding film of Equator from the Air travels across Indonesia and Borneo, where booming cities, expanding agriculture and disappearing forests are placing extraordinary pressure on both wildlife and people.

From a sinking megacity to endangered elephants, orangutans and crocodiles, the film explores how aerial technology is allowing scientists and conservationists to see environmental change as it happens — and find new ways to respond.

1.1M+

LAUNCH AUDIENCE

7.0/10

AUDIENCE RATING

74%

MAFAB audience score

“Superb”

— The Guardian

Highlights

High in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the Gheralta Mountains rise dramatically from the semi-arid plains below. Carved into their sandstone cliffs are ancient churches accessible only by climbing the rock face — a journey that remains an important part of religious life for the communities who live beneath them.

The film follows Ngisti and her family as they prepare to take her newborn son, Dawit, to Abuna Yemata Guh for his baptism. Local tradition holds that boys should be baptised on the 40th day after birth, giving the family a fixed day on which to undertake the journey.

For Ngisti, the challenge is particularly acute. Recovering from a difficult birth just over five weeks earlier, she joins her family and village on a journey lasting several hours. The route includes a near-vertical 20-metre climb using hand and footholds worn into the rock, before the final approach to the church along an exposed ledge with drops of around 200 metres on either side.

Against the immense scale of the Gheralta landscape, the film remains rooted in one deeply personal journey. The physical danger of the climb and the vulnerability of a newborn child give tangible weight to a story about faith, tradition and the lengths a family will go to secure what they believe is the best possible beginning for their son.

“Stunning spectacles”

— BBC Wildlife Magazine

production

The South East Asia film, directed by Anne Sommerfield, brings together aerial spectacle, presenter-led adventure and character-driven conservation stories across one of the world's most rapidly changing regions. Local production records independently place Anne directing the Equator from the Air shoot in Jakarta, while crew records credit her as producer on the series.

The challenge was to make environmental change visible at two very different scales. From the air, expanding cities, fragmented forests and changing landscapes reveal the extraordinary extent of human impact. On the ground, those same pressures become personal — experienced through farmers living alongside elephants, scientists searching for orangutans and conservationists racing to protect endangered species.Aerial technology therefore became more than a visual device. Drones and aircraft are woven directly into the storytelling, allowing the filmmaking to move between the scale of an entire landscape and the individual people and animals living within it.

Gordon Buchanan provides the connective thread, moving between these stories and meeting the scientists, conservationists and communities developing practical responses to rapid environmental change. His journey takes the film from the immense urban footprint of Jakarta to remote forests and waterways, continually shifting between observation from above and intimate encounters on the ground.

The result is a film in which perspective becomes part of the storytelling — using the view from the air not simply to create spectacle, but to reveal environmental change that can be difficult to comprehend from ground level, and the ingenuity of those working to protect both wildlife and people.