General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Mia and the White Lion

Mia and the White Lion (Mia et le Lion Blanc) is a 2018 family adventure film directed by Gilles de Maistre about an eleven-year-old girl, Mia, who befriends a white lion cub named Charlie born on her parents' lion breeding farm in South Africa, and flees with him when she learns the farm sells lions to trophy hunters.¹^•² It is a French, German, and South African co-production produced by Galatée Films, and it runs 98 minutes.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Director / writers	Gilles de Maistre; screenplay by Prune de Maistre and William Davies¹
Release	France and Belgium December 26, 2018; United States limited release April 12, 2019²^•⁴
Production method	Shot over three years with the same white lion, Thor, from cub to adult, without special effects⁵
Animal supervision	Lion expert Kevin Richardson oversaw the production and all interactions between lions and children⁶
Lead cast	Daniah De Villiers as Mia, with Mélanie Laurent, Langley Kirkwood, and Ryan Mac Lennan¹
Reception	88% Tomatometer (16 reviews) and 52% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes; $400.3K gross in the United States⁴
Attendance	About 1.5 million spectators in France and 6 million worldwide in 2019⁷

Spoilers

Plot

Mia's family leaves London to manage a lion breeding farm in the South African bush, formerly her grandfather's. Mia resists the move until the birth of a white cub, Charlie, whom she raises and grows up alongside. Three years later, when Charlie has become a full-grown lion, Mia discovers the farm's secret: her father sells lions to trophy hunters, and she witnesses an in-enclosure hunt. With her younger brother Mick's help, she runs away with Charlie to cross South Africa and reach the Timbavati reserve, where the lion can live protected.¹^•⁸^•⁹

The film is a work of fiction, not a documentary, though the friendship shown on screen is real.¹⁰

Origin

The idea came from de Maistre's work on Les Petits Princes, a 2011 France 2 documentary series about children around the world who form bonds with wild animals. In South Africa he filmed a boy whose parents ran a lion breeding farm of about a hundred lions, who told him the animals were raised for conservation and sale to zoos. After leaving, he learned the lions were mostly sold to hunters, and that the parents had lied to their own son; he made the betrayal of a child by a father the dramatic core of the film.¹¹^•¹²

He then approached Kevin Richardson, a South African zoologist who has interacted with lions for more than twenty years and whom de Maistre had profiled in the documentary L'Homme qui murmure à l'oreille des lions. Richardson told him the project would only work if the film were made over three years, starting with a newborn cub, so that a genuine bond could form between the child and one specific lion.¹²^•¹⁰

Production method

A three-year shoot. The production cast more than 300 children in South Africa before choosing Daniah De Villiers, who first approached a lion cub head-first rather than with her hands, which convinced Richardson she was right for the role.¹² Filming ran in four blocks over three years, in chronological order, so that the actors and the lions grew up together on screen.¹²^•¹³

One white lion, Thor, plays Charlie from the age of four months to the end of the film; as a very young cub he had a double, another lion named Charlie, and the newborn was played by a female cub called Neige.⁵^•⁹ A pride of six lions grew up together during the production.⁶

Safety and training. Only three people were allowed to interact with the lions: De Villiers, Ryan Mac Lennan, and Richardson. De Villiers and Mac Lennan underwent three impregnation sessions per week, of two to three hours each, for three years, learning to behave around the lion under Richardson's supervision. Once the lion reached adulthood, Richardson returned to full-time supervision of the children.⁶^•¹²

The crew treated Thor as an actor rather than a trained animal, letting him habituate to cameras and microphones; shooting stopped on days he refused to work, and some sequences took three or four days while others were completed in a quarter of an hour. During the lions' adolescent period around age two, the crew retreated into cages for safety.¹²^•¹⁴ De Maistre has said that scenes putting an adult lion among people were staged, while the relationship between the girl and the lion was not.¹⁵

Aftermath. After production ended, Thor and the other lions moved to the Welgedacht private reserve, a sanctuary created by Kevin Richardson about an hour northeast of Johannesburg, supported by a fund set up by the production team. De Villiers has continued to visit Thor and to work on lion conservation causes alongside Richardson.⁶^•⁹ A sequel was considered and abandoned, because ending the daily interactions ended the three-year learning process that made the relationship possible.¹²

Reception

The film opened in France and Belgium on December 26, 2018, and rolled out across Europe through early 2019, with a limited United States release on April 12, 2019.²^•⁴ It drew about 1.5 million spectators in France and, according to de Maistre, 6 million worldwide in 2019, which he described as the best result for a French film in the world that year.⁷ In the United States it grossed $400.3K.⁴

Critics were divided on the packaging rather than the intent. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds 88% among 16 critics against a 52% audience score. Rick Bentley of the Tribune News Service called it a moving story about family, trust, love, and conservation, while Courtney Howard of Variety found that packaging the message in a family-friendly narrative proved problematic, and John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter questioned the practice of using real wildlife around children.⁴ Common Sense Media, which recommends the film for ages 10 and up, noted that it exposes South Africa's trophy-hunting industry, including scenes in which lions are shot and killed, and that it does not address the longer history of colonialism in the country.¹⁶ The film was rated PG in the United States for thematic elements, peril, and some language.⁴

Conservation message

The film's stated purpose is to denounce the trade in captive-bred lions for trophy hunting, in which farms raise lions under the appearance of conservation and sell them to be shot in enclosures.¹¹^•¹³ De Maistre noted that the film was sold for distribution around the world except in South Africa, the country where the practice it depicts takes place.¹¹ The project ran from October 2013 to December 2018 under the sponsorship of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, in its field of conservation of endangered species.⁸

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026