WILD BEAUTY: Mustang Spirit of the West

The creation of this film was deeply personal on every level imaginable. In 2017, I was brought aboard to write and direct the modern day reimagining of Black Beauty— a classic novel that impacted so much of my childhood and great love of horses. I had no idea that my desire to honor Anna Sewell's original intentions would next lead to crafting a feature length documentary.

Not many people know that Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty as an animal welfare plea, to raise awareness for the horses of her time in the late 1800s. In our story, Beauty is born into the world a wild horse, a purposeful change I made with the hopes of illuminating what wild horses are going through in the Western United States today.

In the creation of Black Beauty, it was quite important to me to authentically include real wild horse footage in the movie. To do it, my husband Ed and I cobbled together a small bit of financing ourselves to film for about two weeks in 2018 in remote Utah, Nevada and Wyoming. I was then able to cut this footage, which included the stunning horses of the iconic Onaqui herd outside of Salt Lake City in Utah— as if they were Black Beauty’s wild family. In addition to writing and directing both of these films, I also edited them. The documentary in particular was quite a feat to complete, with four years and over 40TB of footage to find our story.

That very first trip into the wild with the horses was life changing. And our small, brave documentary team of five soon realized— as we hauled our heavy Alexa, sticks, and drone on foot through miles of rough terrain— we had a unique opportunity and platform to tell this under illuminated story, long after the credits rolled on Black Beauty. So we kept going, putting together our financing bit by bit with people who thankfully believed in us. Over four years, we shot across the vast Western United States: from California, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Idaho, and Arizona. There were eleven flat tires, and plenty of questionable motel rooms along the way.

In the midst of all this, Ed and I started a nonprofit called The Wild Beauty Foundation, and began rescuing horses in need, while doing programs with kids to raise awareness through creativity.

What is perhaps most markedly special about this journey is that children around the world have already been impacted, and have begun writing us letters to send to lawmakers on their behalf to protect wild horses. The only way to express what it feels like to hold these hand written letters in our hands, or to stand amongst a herd of hundreds of wild horses at sunset, is pure joy. As David Thoreau so poetically described, there is a tonic to wildness.

We have now seen such profound beauty, as well as suffered the acute sadness of watching these highly intelligent creatures be decimated by cruel, antiquated helicopter roundups that take them away from their land, their families, and incarcerate them in long term government holding facilities, never to gallop again.

We have risked our lives to bring this project to a global audience, to show both the beauty as well as share the truth about why wild horses are disappearing— all with the goal that our storytelling can help make lasting change.

Thank you kindly for your consideration of our film, Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West.

— Ashley Avis