Saving Mango – A Cat's Story is an independent English-speaking Israeli drama film which was distributed in 2022 and created by Oren Peled. (This is Peled's second feature film after "The Ventilators" from 2006). The actors in the film are: Simba the cat in the role of Mango, Josh Bloomberg as Mango's voice, Eli Gorenstein, Michal Goldberg Ayal, Naama Savion Sarit and Oren Peled.

The film was screened in several film festivals around the world, including England, the USA, Ukraine (online event), Greece, India and Romania (winning the "Best Children's Film Award", the "Best Storytelling Award" and "Chinh Silver Award" in three of them). In addition, the film was screened as part of a fundraising event for animals welfare that took place in Chengdu China on World Animal Day (4.10.23) and in a village in Nepal as part of a welfare project for local young students around the topic of animals and produced by IAFFF and Rainbow Volunteer Club. טקסט=|ממוזער| |ימין

Plot summary

After his beloved family gets involved in a car accident, Mango the cat is forced to survive on his own and to miss them, hopefully they will return back home one day...

The production (including a spoiler)

Already at the beginning of the production, which lasted over five years and began back in July 2017, Peled decided not to use digital animation at all, so in order to achieve as much authenticity as possible in regards to the main character of the cat Mango – everything on the screen will be a result of live footages of a real flesh and blood cat. So almost the absolute majority of the effects in the film are an outcome of manipulations on the footages (such as green screen, rotoscope, etc.) and not animation. At the end of the production, almost 40 minutes from the 78 minutes length finished film, included special effects, (the vast majority of them were done by using "Mocha Pro" software. ימין|ממוזער In order to obtain authentic reactions from his cat Simba throughout the filming, and to create a large variety of convincing facial expressions that would show fear, joy, concern and hope, Peled surrounded Simba with four cameras over approximately 118 non-consecutive days of filming. By that way he created a huge stock footages of raw materials from which he assembled the final film. Five years later, in a questions and answers session with the audience at the "International Animal Future Film Festival", which took place in London on July 2023, Peled said that in many cases Simba himself "rewrote" the screenplay from time to time while filming, and that more than once his unexpected reactions to pre-scripted situations created moments that took the movie to better places than he planned. (For example, in the final scene of the film, when Mango looks surprised towards the parking lot and discovers the car parked there - During filming, Simba simply jumped out from his spot on the trampoline for an unknown reason and stared at the parking lot with a curious look (in the final film, this look turned into Mango's look at the family's car in the parking lot. That look actually provides the audience a real proof that the family actually returns home). ימין|ממוזער As soon as Peled saw that, the whole method of working on this production has changed, and he realized that in fact he didn't go out for shooting a film but for "fishing"… fishing for as many authentic moments as possible that will eventually combine with a lot of luck into a complete and coherent film, by the very fact that it's impossible to tame a cat, but only to manipulate him, and that the best way to get authentic and reliable expressions from him is simply by treating the production itself less as a narrative feature film and more as a documentary nature film.

Distribution

On October 22, 2022, "Saving Mango – A Cat's Story" was released for a special and limited edition for sale on the direct viewing platform "Vimeo On Demand". The marketing was aimed specifically to the cat-loving audience and included materials about the production process and ancillary products from the film. The original distribution date was aimed for October 4, 2022 (World Animal Day) but Peled didn't manage to finish the mix sound and color grading for the film on time and the work on it ended two weeks later.

Five months later, the film was screened for the first time in front of an audience at the Maryland International Film Festival in the USA on March 24, 2023.

:Afterwards the film has continued to the following festivals.

International Animal Future Film Festival in London England (where it won the Best Storytelling Award).

Buzz iff international film festival in Buzău Romania (where it won the Best Children's Film Award).

Bridges International Film Festival in Corinth Greece.

Upstate New York Film Festival in New York USA.

Ukraine Kids First Film Festival in Ukraine (a festival that took place online).

Chinh India Kids Film Festival in New Delhi India (where it won the Chinh Silver Award).

:In addition, the film took part in two other projects.

It was screened as part of a fundraising event for animal welfare held on International Animal Day 4.10.23 by IAFFF, Honi and the Animals Asia Foundation, in Chengdu China.

In an educational project around the topic of animals, that was organized by both IAFFF and the Rainbow Volunteer Club, and took place in Nepal.