In his inimitable fashion, Herzog follows a South African naturalist’s quest to discover a new species of elephant in AngolaWerner Herzog has once again shown his flair – his genius, perhaps – for locating passionate quests and obsessions at the limits of the imaginable. This new film is about South African naturalist Dr Steve Boyes and his mission to discover if there is a hitherto undiscovered mega-species of giant elephants, or “ghost elephants”, living beyond the human gaze in the vast highland plateau of Angola. He also wants to see if these fugitive elephants – if they exist – are genetically related to a particular huge elephant, the biggest on record, which is on show at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, named the “Fénykövi” elephant after the hunter who shot it in 1955.Boyes has been nurturing this hunch for many years. It is not clear what the scientific basis for his hypothesis is, but he is in constant touch with Kalahari bush trackers ...