Premiere: Watch Kathryn Bigelow’s Short Film About Elephant Poaching, Last Days

Director Kathryn Bigelow has won countless awards for her films about the War on Terror — but in her new short film Last Days, premiering today on TIME.com, she’s tackling the war on elephants.

“Last year I was made aware of the very real connection between elephant poaching and terrorism,” Bigelow tells TIME. “For me it represented the diabolical intersection of two problems that are of great concern — species extinction and global terrorism. Both involve the loss of innocent life, and both require urgent action.”

Because making a feature film would have taken years during which more elephants would be hunted, Bigelow chose to work with filmmakers on the short film Last Days in hopes of inspiring more urgent action.

“An elephant disappears every 15 minutes,” she says. “It is our hope that this film helps bring an activist into existence at least that often.”

To learn more, visit lastdaysofivory.com and twitter.com/lastdaysofivory.