National Geographic filmmakers Dereck Joubert and Beverly Joubert’s The Last Lions — which New York Times critic Manohla Dargis calls “one of the most urgent and certainly among the most beautifully shot documentaries to hit the big screen in recent memory” — tells the story of the threats that face a family of lions in the harsh world of Botswana’s Okavango Delta. The project, which took the husband and wife team years to shoot and edit, seeks to illuminate a much larger issue: the fact that the current population of African lions is about 12 percent of what it was a half-century ago. Click through to check out a gallery of photos from the film’s companion book, and if you live in New York, LA, or DC, be sure to check out The Last Lions in theaters beginning today.

“With two cubs left, Ma di Tau holds them close. She is a good mother in an impossible situation struggling to hunt alone with two cubs to feed.” Photo credit: Beverly Joubert