×

Yankee Lake native is man behind ‘Rhino Man’

A Yankee Lake native is focusing attention on the plight of rhinoceroses and the risks taken by rangers to prevent their extinction.

John Jurko II is the co-director, co-writer and co-producer of the documentary “Rhino Man,” which already has won several awards at film festivals. Jurko will screen the film Tuesday at Cinemark Tinseltown Boardman and will do a Q&A afterward. It also is available through Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV and other on-demand services.

“Rhino Man” had been in the works for several years before Jurko — who graduated from Kennedy Christian High School (now Kennedy Catholic) in Hermitage, Pa., and briefly attended Youngstown State University before majoring in film production at Bowling Green State University — became involved.

When he moved to Atlanta in 2016, he found an advertising company called Friendly Human, which primarily did commercial work, but it also assisted on documentary projects. He saw an early trailer for “Rhino Man” on its website.

“They seemed like a really cool group of people, and I kind of stalked them for about a year, but they didn’t have a job open,” Jurko said. “But I just went and met them and then showed up at some events they were doing, and eventually, after a year, got a job there.”

He asked about the “Rhino Man” project, which at that time was a lot of vignettes about rhinos and rangers, but not much structure, and Friendly Human was focused on other, more commercial projects.

“I connected with (co-director, co-writer and co-producer) Matt Lindenberg, who started this,” Jurko said. “He still had a bigger vision for this film, and so we just sat down and started hashing out, like, how do we really structure a story arc for the film, and who are the main characters? We raised the money, went to shoot in 2018 and that’s really when I got connected with it. … And from there, just kind of slowly took over my life. And I ended up basically taking the production over. It became my baby.”

There are fewer than 27,000 rhinoceroses in the world today, mainly because of the value of their horns. A rhino horn can fetch $20,000 per kilogram, which makes a full-size rhino horn worth up to $80,000 in countries suffering abject poverty and unemployment rates approaching 50%.

“Rhino Man” focuses on the grueling selection and training program for rangers entrusted with protecting the species at Kruger National Park in South Africa. Between 2011 and 2020, 8,000 rhinos were poached from Kruger. Most were slaughtered, but the documentary also shows the efforts to save the animals who didn’t die after being horrifically maimed.

The program is physically and mentally taxing, designed to weed out those who can’t handle the demands of the job and also lack the moral compass to resist the bribes offered by the poachers. In some ways, it’s like watching “Survivor,” only instead of competing for a $1 million prize, they’re competing for a job that has a not insignificant risk of death.

According to the movie, about 140 rangers worldwide die on the job each year, about half from homicide, killed by poachers who don’t value human life any more than they do animals.

Jurko spent two weeks in South Africa in 2018, and a return visit was planned in late March 2020. As COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns were starting worldwide, Jurko had a choice — cancel his trip or move it up before South Africa was shut down with no idea when he might be able to return.

Jurko picked the latter.

“I’m a little bit of an adventure junkie,” he said.

He ended up being in South Africa for nine months. With “Rhino Man” in temporary limbo as Lindenberg’s nonprofit organization Global Conservation Corps tried to raise the funds to fully control the film, Jurko spent most of his time in 2020 shooting footage for a movie covering similar themes. What happens with that footage hasn’t been determined, he said.

Jurko made an unplanned — and unwanted — return to South Africa in 2022. One of the documentary’s subjects, Anton Mzimba, head ranger at the Timbavati reserve in South Africa, was murdered by poachers in July that year.

The filmmakers weren’t sure how to handle it initially — “I think for a month, I just tried to put it out of my mind,” Jurko said — but ultimately they realized it had to be included, and the scenes with Mzimba’s wife, who also was shot in the attack, and family provide some of the documentary’s most poignant scenes.

“Anton spent seven years working with us to make this movie, because he wanted to bring more awareness and to bring more support around the world for that … It made the movie more impactful and just brought the reality home of what these rangers are facing. We had to put that into the film.

“Anton really believed in this work, and right up to the end, he stood up for it. So we want to make sure we carry that legacy, his hope and dream for the future.”

If you go …

WHAT: Screening of documentary “Rhino Man” followed by Q&A with co-director, co-writer and co-producer John Jurko II

WHEN: 7 p.m. Aug. 20

WHERE: Cinemark TInseltown Boardman, 7401 Market St., Boardman

HOW MUCH: $19.95 with tickets available in advance through Eventbrite.

Have an interesting story? Contact Andy Gray by email at agray@tribtoday.com. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, @TribToday.

Starting at $2.99/week.

Subscribe Today