Suffolk film-maker Jez Lewis from near Diss and Bury St Edmunds hopes his film Elephant Mother will galvanise change in the tourist industry in Thailand

Film director and producer Jez Lewis from Suffolk doesn’t shy away from difficult subjects – in fact he tackles them head on.

His award-winning 2010 documentary film Shed Your Tears and Walk Away is about the friends he grew up with in West Yorkshire dying of suicide and drugs - and is credited with being the main inspiration for the hit TV show Happy Valley.

Jez, 57, who now lives in Wortham, in between Bury St Edmunds and Diss, not only takes on the hard subject matter of the abuse of elephants in Thailand with his latest completed documentary Elephant Mother, but it was the most risky of all his films to make.

The film, which Jez describes as an exposé, stars the inspirational tribal Thai woman Lek Chailert, who rescues elephants from abuse in the lucrative Thai tourist industry whilst threatened by a powerful so-called ‘elephant mafia’ of traders and traffickers. The arrival of Covid in 2020 posed unprecedented challenges for the film-maker.

Unaware of just how dangerous it would turn out to be, Jez and his partner Rachel Wexler, who run Bungalow Town Productions, were compelled to make the film when approached by Jocelyn Cammack, co-director on the production, some time ago.

Jocelyn showed them some footage of ‘appalling abuse’ of baby elephants, who were being tortured into submission so they become obedient to humans.

“Seeing a baby animal tortured was so abhorrent, Rachel and myself thought if we can help with this in any way, then we must,” said Jez.

“And we knew it was risky, but as long as there were tourists there, like I said, we were leaves in a forest. Even when I went in 2021, I didn’t understand how exposed I would be.”

Basically disguised as a tourist, he worked in the country filming Lek, the founder of the Save the Elephant Foundation and the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand.

In 2017 Jez went to Thailand for the first time to meet with Lek and went on a ‘negotiation’ to rescue an elephant, which is featured in the film.

Then, he was working as producer on the documentary, but as the coronavirus pandemic began to grip the world and everywhere got locked down, he went over on his own. Now effectively a one-man band, he also took on the camera operating and directing.

Buying a camera that could pass as a tourist camera, he worked under cover.

Jez told of having to get through the military checkpoints that were in place due to Covid.

And he said everywhere he went he was treated with suspicion: people took pictures of him, including taxi drivers in secret, the police took his photo and name, and the police were waiting for him when he went to an elephant camp.

He also mentioned that he was staying in a hotel where there were no other guests other than him and he thinks ‘they went through my luggage’. ‘They’ referring to the hotel staff. And on another occasion security officers circled around him at the airport.

He spoke of a ‘climate of fear’ and needing to protect the identity of some of those involved in the film.

What must have added to this atmosphere of dread and paranoia was the murder of someone Jez understands to have been a tourist – who was on the same scheme as him when he went out to Thailand in 2021 – on Phuket while he was there.

Jez said: “I was terrified. I was terrified the whole time, it was awful.”

He didn’t expect to be murdered, but on an occasion after the police were waiting for him, seemingly, he went back to the hotel and did computer research about how the mafia works in Thailand.

He continued: “One of the things I read was they throw people out of windows or off balconies and call it suicide and I was reading all this scary stuff and there was a knock at the door.

“I answered my hotel door and there was a guy standing there holding two pillows like this [he demonstrates] with his other hand out of sight, like they do in old movies for a makeshift gun silencer, and I thought ‘oh, I’m going to get shot now’.

“And they did have a balcony and I thought to myself ‘well, I’d rather get shot than thrown off a balcony’ and it turned out, he said ‘you ordered extra pillows’ and I went ‘no I didn’t’...I was thinking ‘is this his way of establishing if I’m the right target?’

“Anyway I laughed about it afterwards, but for a moment it was like, there’s somebody being murdered three miles away, we know the mafia will kill people, we know of friends of Lek who have been assassinated. It was momentarily a real prospect.”

Jez was never actually arrested – he says if he had been he wouldn’t be here now.

When asked whether he continues to fear for his safety, he says he will never go back to Thailand.

In his trademark style, Elephant Mother focuses on Lek, not the process of Jez making the film and the risks he faced.

Jez, who has been involved in making about 25 films, considers himself a journalist and has worked on hard-hitting topics like human slavery, trafficking, child poverty, suicide and drug addiction.

However, he hasn’t always been a film-maker. Before he began this line of work 21 years ago, he was a technology policy analyst for about 10 years, as well as having done lots of different jobs, such as a solicitor’s clerk, martial arts instructor and building labourer.

He said ‘when you grow up poor’ you do whatever work is available.

He never went to film school, but he was the first person in his family to go to university. While he dropped out of physics partly due to ‘being poor’, he ended up gaining a degree in cultural studies and a masters degree in science and technology policy.

When asked what he hopes Elephant Mother will achieve, he said: “Bluntly what we are hoping to achieve is to encourage change within the tourist industry. It’s specific to elephants, but bears, dancing bears, tigers. You can go and lie with a tiger and that tiger is drugged.”

He added: “It’s also a much bigger thing as well. There’s a line in the film where Lek said ‘yes, I think people treat Thailand like a playground’ and I don’t believe in treating the world as a playground, certainly not in the destructive way humans often do.”

The main message he hopes will come across from our interview is for people to be aware that some so-called animal sanctuaries may not be sanctuaries so he encourages people to do their research before visiting.

•Elephant Mother is not currently available on streaming services, but should be by the end of the month.

It is being shown tomorrow, August 14, at the Bertha DocHouse cinema in London. It is hoped more dates at a variety of locations will be available soon.

If anyone would like to organise a community screening or if a local cinema wants to show the film, get in contact with Jez via btp@bungalow-town.com