Five things Lion director Faith Musembi learnt about life from the pride

We build cities, careers, and relationships, spend years trying to work out where we belong and, somewhere between all of that, hopefully find a few people who have our backs. Life can be complicated. Or so we may think to ourselves.

Spend four years watching lions, though, and you might realise that we are not as distant from our natural world cousins, and that means all breathing beings in the animal kingdom, as we’d like to believe.

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Kenyan producer and director Faith Musembi had several realisations along those lines while working on National Geographic’s Lion, which debuts on the channel and Disney + this week. The show follows Kio, a young lion growing up in Kenya’s Maasai Mara.

The production demanded four years of observation and waiting, and Musembi said watching Kio and his pride also revealed parallels between lions and people that go well beyond the obvious differences between us.

Everyone needs a pride

Kio’s journey is partly a search for belonging. Musembi said that was something immediately recognisable in human lives too.

We may not have prides in the literal sense, but much of life is spent finding the people around whom we feel we belong.

“We go through life trying to find our tribe or our pride, right? Find our group of people where we can have that sense of belonging.”

Lions gather together because connection matters, she said. Humans, Musembi suggested, are not terribly different.

Strength and tenderness

Male lions hardly suffer from an image problem when it comes to masculinity. They are powerful, territorial animals capable of extraordinary aggression.

Yet Musembi was struck by another side of them.

“It’s particularly striking when you see the big males who are so full of energy and everything, and then they’re so gentle with each other, and they like giving each other cuddles,” she said.

“Humans like doing that. We crave connection. We want to touch each other, we want to cuddle with each other.”

Faith Musembi stands in the back of the film vehicle, working with the crew as they wait for lions to enter the frame. Picture: National Geographic/Abigail Brown. Having each other’s backs

Belonging to a group is one thing, but being present in a group also requires behavioural awareness. Musembi noticed that the lions did not simply occupy the same space; they looked after one another.

“They care for each other,” she said. “The fact that they look out for each other. You know, we all want that. They have each other’s backs.”

Acceptance, because it is what it is

Musembi knew lions slept a lot before she started working on Lion. Knowing it and spending hour after hour sitting beside a sleeping star when you have a television series to make, however, are quite different things.

“You can’t just go, okay, while they’re sleeping today, let’s go film the hippos,” she said. “You have to sit there, and you have to wait.”

At first, waiting was frustrating. “You get super antsy, and you go, we can’t just be sitting here, we need to be filming something.”

But alas, there was no point becoming frustrated with a lion for behaving like a lion.

“Then eventually you just become very zen about it, and you accept.”

All you need is a little patience

A lion can apparently do very little for an awfully long time and then, without consulting the director of the show, suddenly do something spectacular. Waiting for something to happen, in this sense, does not mean behaving like a screensaver.

“We need to be ready for the few moments when they do things, because that’s what the series is going to be about,” Musembi said.

It is perhaps the most useful lesson the lions gave her, she said.

Patience is not simply sitting around hoping something happens. It is being prepared when it does.

“I’m patient today in a way that I wasn’t before I started filming lions.”

And perhaps spending four years watching another species also changes the way you look

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