Director Xander Robin's first feature documentary, The Python Hunt is an adventurous saga that follows a group of Burmese python hunters participating in a state-sanctioned 10-day challenge to eradicate the invasive species from the Florida Everglades. However, the documentary goes beyond observing the frenzied competition to bring up broader questions of what inspires people to take up python hunting in the first place, and whether this is the right thing to do for our environment. Robin may be new to the nonfiction space, but his producer Lance Oppenheim is not. After breaking out with the surprise Sundance crowdpleaser Some Kind Of Heaven, Oppenheim has spent years plunging his viewers into strange new worlds and subcultures. The subjects of his films may live differently than what's considered "normal," but through their own words and stories, the audience gains a broader understanding of their corner of the world, and maybe a new perspective on their own. Like Oppenheim's work, The Python Hunt explores a subculture new to most viewers, using a cast of different voices to represent a niche experience. In the process, Robin also captures a sense of what it means to grow up in Florida alongside so many reptiles, and the appeal to those coming to the state for something more than a trip to a theme park or beach.
In Some Kind Of Heaven, Oppenheim also took his camera to Florida, filming at The Villages, the country's largest retirement community. There he found misfits trying to settle into the busy social schedule, sustain their marital spark, or perhaps even find love in a kind of fantasyland where residents drive golf carts and hold high expectations for their golden years. In 2024, Oppenheim followed up Some Kind Of Heaven with the unexpected Spermworld, a look at various families searching for sperm donors through the internet instead of a lab. That same year, his series Ren Faire followed a dying king of America's largest renaissance festival with a Succession-struggle to find his successor. Throughout the films and TV series, Oppenheim avoids traditional talking-head interviews and instead puts his audience in the spaces where his subjects live, observing them through their daily routine and giving them the space to talk to the camera (often in voiceover), as his stylish coverage takes over the screen. The audience feels the Florida heat sending retirees to the pool, the awkwardness of approaching a stranger from the internet to be one genetic half of a couple's future child, and the self-mythologizing a potential royal successor dabbles in to create and sustain a fantasy.
That same sensibility exists in The Python Hunt, where Robin looks at a number of teams on the hunt for the invasive species. There's Toby, a Floridian writer with deep roots in the region who's acting as a guide for Anne, an 80-something retiree who wants one more adventure before retreating back to her quiet life in her new state. The latter is one of the film's most striking personalities, carrying a long knife at the ready should the occasion to kill a python arise. Then there's the kindly San Franciscan, Richard, who hosts a big get-together for fellow snake hunters and seems equally driven by adventure and the chance to help the environment. Professional python hunter Jimbo and his daughter Shannon search for pythons together despite Jimbo's disdain for the 1000 or so out-of-towners swooping in to kill snakes. Even though Jimbo can't officially participate in the challenge, he does whip up interest in other local python-themed events, still cashing in on python season.
The subjects of The Python Hunt make for an intricate portrait of the different kinds of people who take on the daunting challenge of tracking down pythons in the dark, but it also counterbalances the state's famous competition with a conflicting viewpoint: What if the snakes are not the only problem facing the Everglades? Briefly, the documentary explores the possibility that perhaps pesticides and human encroachment may have impacted local wildlife just as much as the theory that Hurricane Andrew knocked down a reptile dealer's storage facility, setting hundreds of invasive snakes loose in the Everglades. The film doesn't directly explore the xenophobic rhetoric from snake hunters, but the angry calls to protect the country from foreign invaders feels especially poignant given how much has politically changed in Florida in recent years. It's a reminder that not all oddballs are harmless fun, and it's an idea that Oppenheim has also featured in his earlier work, following subjects who could be just as cruel or inconsiderate as they could be charming.
