Final Rating: 3/5
The Lost Tiger, directed by Chantelle Murray, opens with Red (Jimi Bani) and Kara (Nakkiah Lui), a young kangaroo couple, discovering an abandoned Tasmanian tiger baby while visiting a cliff by the seaside. Despite their best efforts, the couple are unable to locate the tiger’s parents, and eventually adopt him, naming him Teo. Twelve years later, Teo is the stage manager for Red and Kara’s traveling wrestling show, Roomania, dutifully supporting his parents and three sisters. But after a visit to the local museum, Teo learns that he’s from “The Lost Island,” and runs away from home to find his people.
Conflict in Lost Tiger comes in the form of the Adventurer’s Guild, led by Quinella Quoll (Celeste Barber). Quoll and the Guild are constantly searching for new “discoveries,” and can barely contain their excitement at the idea of “discovering” the Lost Island. Quoll is transparently a conqueror, her “discoveries” more a way for her to acquire fame and fortune than actually learn anything. Barber’s performance revels in Quoll’s obvious self-absorbed villainy.
On more than one occasion, Quoll will accidentally express a passion for colonization, only to correct herself mid-word to “conservation.” Upon her first encounter with the tigers on the Lost Island, she proudly announces that she’s “discovered the Lost Island,” before turning to Teo and announcing she’s “discovered” him, too. “I’m just discovering all sorts of things today,” she says, right before offering to buy the tigers’ land and artifacts for “a handsome sum. Final offer.”
The Lost Tiger features solid performances from its largely unknown cast. Aside from Barber’s Quoll, Rhys Darby stands out. Darby, an accomplished comedian, is hilarious as Plato, a well-meaning but lazy museum janitor who aspires to membership of the Adventurer’s Guild and accompanies Teo on his journey to the Lost Island. Plato is a carefree character who, in other circumstances, would never have any motivation whatsoever. His mix of meekness and zeal for adventure makes him a great foil both for the single-mindedly driven Teo, as well as the aggressively maternal Kara.
Speaking of Kara, Nakkiah Lui puts in a fantastic performance as the matriarch of the kangaroos. She’s the driving force behind adopting Teo after Red finds him abandoned; she’s the star of Roomania, and the most perfectionist when it comes to her and her family’s performance; and she’s the one who pushes hardest to go after Teo when he runs away. In a touching moment near the end of the film, Kara expresses her worry about losing Teo if he goes to be with the other tigers, prompting Teo to respond with confusion: “How could you lose me? I’m your son.”
One strange aspect of Lost Tiger is how it mythologizes Tasmania. The titular type of tiger is a thylocene, or Tasmanian tiger, a species which went extinct less than 100 years ago, but which some believe may still be around. They’re just hiding… or lost.
The tigers inhabiting a “Lost Island” that’s not really “lost,” but unknown enough to mainlanders that it needs to be “discovered” works well for the anti-colonial narrative. That said, it’s a bit confusing when the island in question is a real place with a capital city and an airport. It’s also a bit strange that the colonizers are animals indigenous to Australia, who could just as easily stand in for a colonized population, were the movie’s focus only slightly shifted.
Ultimately, these are minor details, but they stand out as odd in the context of an otherwise cogent film with so much to say about colonialism and the dual nature of museums as institutions.
Lost Tiger doesn’t break new ground in regard to either anti-colonialist or adoption narratives, but it accomplishes both well. It frames serious issues in a way kids can understand and enjoy and provides plenty of material to encourage discussions between parents and children on the way home from the theatre.
The Lost Tiger was seen during the 2025 imagineNATIVE Film Festival.
