“The Python Hunt” is that rare case where an indie film easily raises financing, grabs upbeat response from audiences and critics at a film festival, wins a prize, and launches multiple sales bids. After a rousing response at the big Alamo Drafthouse Lamar screening at SXSW, this colorful, populist portrait of a swath of python hunters — and by extension, America — could hit a commercial nerve.
Here’s how the filmmakers did it.
Work with your friends.
Filmmaker Lance Oppenheim (“Some Kind of Heaven,” “Ren Faire”) brought an idea to his old Florida buddy Xander Robin (“Are We Not Cats”). They had been trying to make a movie together for years, and Robin had labored on his own film about the pet trade in the Florida Everglades that never got off the ground. The concept: cover the annual Python Challenge, a competition that pays $10,000 to the one hunter in 1,000 who brings in the most Burmese snakes, which are destroying wildlife in the vast swampy ecosystem. The only predator able to keep the numbers of these non-poisonous stranglers down: humans. And they’re not doing a good job.
Oppenheim considered making the nonfiction feature himself but told Robin: “‘You would be a much better fit for this subject and the world,’” Oppenheim told IndieWire over Zoom. “It was a fun, spectacular voyage into the night that we had together.”
Oppenheim also brought in another friend, Dani Bernfeld. She had worked with him for three years on 2024 doc series “Ren Faire” (HBO) at the Safdie brothers’ Elara Pictures and now serves as creative president at Artists Equity, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s two-year-old independently financed production company. “The Python Hunt” is their third documentary feature, after U2’s “Kiss the Future,” about the Siege of Sarajevo, and Jennifer Lopez’s “The Greatest Love Story Never Told.”
Producer Lauren Cioffi also worked with Bernfeld on Elara’s Max documentary “Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God.” Two cinematographers (David Bolen and Matt Clegg) were also friends, as well as the two second unit directors (Harrison Fishman and Emery Matson) and editor Max Allman (“Ren Faire”).
“It was a lot of different people running around in the middle of the night in the Everglades,” said Oppenheim. “Most of it came from us all wanting to do something together as friends. Weirdly, it felt like a summer camp environment, even though it was dangerous and there were alligators swimming around. It felt like you were a million miles away from reality, like a fantasia, all the sleepless nights of waiting for something to happen.”
Refine your pitch.
The filmmakers pitched to Artists Equity the Three Cs: a character film, a creature film, and a competition. “As the film was progressing,” said Oppenheim, “the first two became more important to us. The competition became the setting and not the story. You have this great world, but you want to locate the humanity in the world rather than focusing on the more salacious details within it.”
Robin found two subjects by entering the Python Hunt himself before the movie was greenlit. The footage he shot there helped sell the pitch to Artists Equity.
Pick the right characters to follow.
Robin worked with a Florida casting director who had competed in the Python Challenge and specializes in street casting. They reached out to online snake fanatics who might join the hunt. “That led us to Toby, who’s a writer and was taking a group out,” Robin said. “We were looking for people who would have a different perspective at the end of the hunt than at the beginning.”
Be open to what’s happening on the ground.
The original pitch to Artists Equity was focused on the competition. But as Robin and his team filmed for 10 nights in the Everglades, he learned more about the idiosyncratic folks from all over the country chasing the pythons, which are notoriously challenging to catch. He figured out that the competition, which yields about 200 dead pythons out of between 100 to 300,000 pythons in the Everglades (per the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission), is essentially a PR stunt. Florida spends millions every year battling the predator via hired bounty hunters.
Find a supportive home.
Artists Equity’s Damon, Bernfeld, and doc head Gillian Brown gave notes and supported “The Python Hunt” throughout. “They were protecting the artistic integrity of the movie,” said Oppenheim, “and telling us, ‘make the movie you want to make, and if you make it as great as it can possibly be, then people will come. Don’t try to retrofit the movie into some sort of commercial standards.’”
Beyond that, Oppenheim credits the company with fair compensation for the filmmaking team, which is rare outside HBO or FX, he said. “The crew were being compensated with a real wage, versus just waiting and hoping and praying for that to come a little later in the process.”
“Matt and Ben see value in documentaries,” said Bernfeld. “It grows from genuine creative interest. We will continue to prioritize and champion great stories and great storytellers.”
Don’t judge.
When Robin wrapped shooting for the night, he’d hang out with his subjects. “They became close friends of his,” said Oppenheim. “There is conflict and human drama, but he successfully navigated it without presenting it judgmentally. We always saw it as a black comedy like ‘Hands on a Hard Body.’ We could show this to someone in the middle of the country who could watch it and understand it.”
The hunters were frustrated by the long hours they had to put in before nabbing a python. Pro python hunter Toby was determined to deliver a snake for gin-drinking octogenarian Anne to pith, and he did. The enormous python strangles his left arm as he drives his truck back to the motel, but Toby delivers it to her. “She wanted to have an adventure,” said Oppenheim. “There were some pent-up feelings there. For any person, there are reasons for wanting to catch the snake and do away with it. And it’s a distraction or a form of escapism from the problems of their life. Everyone’s running away from something and hoping they’re going to find it in the middle of the Everglades.”
Bernfeld agrees: “We are all looking for some way to connect to other people, and that’s how these people choose to do that,” she said. “The magic zone is when you can find your perspectives and opinions being challenged and changed.” Added Brown: “Xander made space to let voices sometimes unheard or stereotyped come through in an authentic way.”
Robin stayed open to the characters as they presented their various peccadillos. One hirsute San Francisco regular, Richard, kept changing his hair and shaving his face over the course of the shoot. “It’s not good to censor people,” said Robin. “it’s good to show the good and the bad. It feels worse when you’re sanding them down. They all have interesting attributes.”
Play the right festival.
SXSW was the right festival launch for this movie, as the Texas audience responded enthusiastically. “It’s an immersive, experiential film. When the snake jumps out, you jump as an audience member,” said Brown. “It’s a strange cast of characters that feels larger than life and stranger than fiction. It plays differently than many docs play. It’s a theatrical cinematic experience.”
WME and UTA are selling the film, which has interest from multiple buyers. Whether it turns into a midnight cult movie or sells to a streamer is the question. “We’re nimble and open and able to work in a wide array of models,” said Bernfeld, “be it streaming and theatrical, financing, co-financing, whatever the case may be. It could play with a wide variety of partners. There’s no set way for us to do things. Part of having a fully independent studio is to be able to look at every project individually and figure out what’s best for that project.”
More Artists Equity docs are in the pipeline — still to be announced.
“The Python Hunt” premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival and is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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