At the dawn of his career, Tony Jones filmed Four Corners documentaries like Frozen Asset alongside producer Martin Butler. Now, for the first time in decades, Tony steps back into the world of documentary filmmaking with his animal advocacy film Sentient.
Here he works with editor Rachel Grierson-Johns to bring forth the unseen world of animal testing, showcasing the lives of primates who are locked in cages and subjected to seemingly endless trauma-inducing tests before being euthanised and subjected to an autopsy. These tests serve a purpose, or so we're told by those who undertake them, by testing out medications or treatments or potential toxins on primates to see what their effect is.
Tony takes us behind the scenes of the journey from the primate farms in Asian countries, all the way to the underground facilities in America where mother macaques are torn away from their babies, leading the scientists undertaking the tests to raise the babies purely for testing purposes. Stark footage about the tests, the primates, and more, opens us up to empathise with animals that we're so keenly distanced from.
With an uncritical eye, Tony then invites us to engage in extending empathy towards the scientists who embark on the testing. We meet one such scientist, Dr Lisa Jones-Engel, who worked with chimps at the Washington Primate Research Centre. She commenced working in the field under the impression this would help humanity cure diseases, but as she worked longer in the field, she grew to realise her life's work was wrongly undertaken.
Sentient is not an easy film by any measure. It's complex, harrowing, and simply devastating to experience. That is, quite clearly, by design. After all, Tony is asking us to empathise with the primates, all the while asking the ultimate question: how can we be better citizens of the world and stop inflicting this level of harm on fellow animals? When will we as a global society start to enact change that sees animals as sentient beings with choices and rights?
These issues, and more, is what Tony unpacks in the following interview, recorded ahead of Sentient's screenings at the Revelation Perth International Film Festival in July 2026, and now released ahead of the films launch at the Melbourne International Film Festival.
Tickets for screenings are available at MIFF.com.au, and Tony Jones will be in attendance at the festival. Screenings are held on 11 & 13 August 2026.
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