From the award-winning filmmaker Jonathan Perry comes Sentinelese, an unparalleled exploration into the isolated people of North Sentinel Island. The narrative film features the suspenseful scenario of a Thai poaching vessel that runs aground on the deadly island, home to the Sentinelese tribe. Years in the making, Sentinelese is backed by collaborative research from world experts including government officials, poacher informants, and lead anthropologists from India and Thailand.
Sentinelese is the first live-action film about North Sentinel Island, a restricted island located within India’s Bay of Bengal. A film synopsis by Muybridge states:
“Offshore India's infamous North Sentinel Island, a Sentinelese boy has been pulled out to sea and is helplessly out of reach from his tribal band. The primitive child is rescued by a Burmese fishing slave and taken aboard a Thai-contracted vessel that has run aground while poaching the restricted surrounding waters. Defenseless against the hostile tribe with the Indian Coast Guard closing in, the trapped poachers are running out of time and options to escape into international waters.”
“The Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island are the only tribe on planet earth that has maintained absolute isolation from the rest of the world,” said Shivappa A. Awaradi, former director of tribal welfare in the government of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, during which he led the first-ever friendly contact expeditions with the Sentinelese tribe. Perry collaborated with Awaradi for roughly two years, utilizing the expert’s first-hand encounters with the hostile tribe as important research for Sentinelese.
“The goal of this film is to give the audience an opportunity to get up close to the tribe, based on anthropological research, down to their genetic attributes,” Perry said. “I hope that the island stays protected and isolated from outsiders; this film provides us a window into their world in the safest manner possible.”
Sentinelese had reshoots in late summer of 2025 on the dual island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean. Filming provided economic benefits to the island through businesses like Kiroula Trading and Consulting Services, supporting local infrastructure. The international production ultimately trained and employed over seventy cast and crew members from multiple Caribbean nations. Perry shattered his kneecap just a few weeks before scheduled filming, an injury that limited his movement and added to the many challenges he faced during production for Sentinelese.
To accurately recreate North Sentinel Island and the Sentinelese people, the production crew leveled a beach landscape and constructed functional outrigger canoes, weapons, and garments, based on archival resources from the actual tribe. A 102-foot-long sea rescue vessel was converted into a Thai poaching ship, loaded with multiple cargo trucks of fishing equipment from around the island. The production is one of the largest operations in film that the island of St. Kitts has ever seen.
“It is immensely important for the history of human society to make films like this because it is modern civilization’s moral and ethical responsibility to help preserve this tiny ancient civilization of Sentinelese. Spreading such awareness among the earthlings is the first step in that direction and this film will serve that great purpose in its own way,” said Awaradi.
The upcoming live-action film follows Perry’s critically acclaimed AI short film with Google Labs, Railbound. Perry first gained recognition for his acclaimed film Subnivean, acquired by Amazon Prime—making him the youngest director on any major streaming platform at just 17. With the growth of his company, Perry is currently developing a large-scale AI war film to be showcased after the distribution of Sentinelese.
Perry’s newest film Railbound has just been released to stream free on the Muybridge YouTube channel. Sentinelese will be premiering on July 20th, 2026 in New Delhi, India for a special international screening engagement. Future screening dates, sneak previews, and exclusive behind-the-scenes content for Sentinelese can be found on Instagram @jonathanperryfilms as it continues its post-production phase.
I made this film because I see North Sentinel as a window into a primitive world. It’s where modern day meets with hunter-gatherers and, some would say, the stone-age, but that’s a little inaccurate. The actual film itself is just surreal, and of course, the deeper I got into it—and since the internet has most factual things wrong, I mean after speaking with [anthropologist], there’s just so many different … beneath that island. It’s pretty surreal. Especially when I got into Thai poaching and the fact that that’s going on today, and received videos from contacts in poaching, kids being pretty much shot and killed and thrown overboard, it’s just wild to even fathom. It’s been my life for the last year and a half, two years. Probably half a year just to get in touch with [anthropologist] because I sent letters and sent things to pretty much everywhere, anyone who’s done an expedition to the island in any way, anyone involved in that, and [anthropologist] emailed me back. At the time I was in France and I had a script drafted up. I wasn’t too confident in it, but then he looked at it and was like, ‘Yeah, you’ve got something here.’ I was like, ‘Okay,’ and then we proceeded to talk about the things that the story actually brings out.
The goal of this film was to get up close to the tribe. You see these documentaries and, of course, they can’t get too close to them. Whether it be their hairstyle—I wanted the audience to be able to get up close to the tribe because I don’t see that happening anytime soon, and I wanted it to be done accurately. I didn’t want to just go to the theater and see a film and find out they had to make up a language because they don’t know the language, which of course they don’t, but with this film we were able to get around that. We were able to portray the tribe in the most accurate way possible, and of course building everything was crazy. I’ve never done that type of construction for a film before. Seeing a 20-foot canoe being built off your drawings is pretty wild.
“I wanted to do the major biomes and learn from there. I’m still a college student, I’m still learning. Though this isn’t a student film by any mark.
“We were filming on an island in the Caribbean and street casting one of the days. I think it’s very important that many films will come after this over the years I’m sure, but they should definitely focus on getting the island right, because it should be able to educate as well.
Following his critically acclaimed film Crookery, Columbus filmmaker Jonathan Perry
Ohio-native Jonathan Perry is best known for his 2019 film Subnivean, which garnered a multitude of awards and was subsequently acquired by Amazon Prime Video for international distribution, making him the youngest director on any major streaming service at the age of 17. After that, Jonathan filmed Crookery at the peak of Ohio’s COVID-19 restrictions and traveled the film festival circuit. With the announcement of his upcoming Caribbean film, Muybridge has exclusively released Jonathan Perry’s latest movie Crookery to stream free on YouTube. Perry is now a junior in college at The Ohio State University and working out of Santa Monica, California with Simple Films and Activision Blizzard as a lead writer and director of the hit game Call of Duty. Jonathan recently wrapped up working on a classified Hulu TV show throughout the city of Columbus. With the growth of the company, Perry is currently in development for a large-scale feature film to be likely filmed in Ohio after the distribution of Sentinelese.
For over a year, 20-year-old Perry worked with government officials, poacher informants, and expert anthropologists from India and Thailand to gather intensive research for Sentinelese. The film introduces the viewer to the modern-day injustice of the Thai poaching slave industry and the modern-day mystery of North Sentinel Island. Perry states in a film synopsis:
“Offshore India's infamous North Sentinel Island, a Sentinelese boy has been pulled out to sea and is helplessly out of reach from his tribal band. The primitive child is rescued by a Burmese fishing slave and taken aboard a Thai-contracted vessel that has run aground while poaching the restricted surrounding waters. Defenseless against the hostile tribe with the Indian coast guard closing in, the trapped poachers are running out of time and options to escape into international waters.”
A few weeks before scheduled filming, Perry shattered his kneecap in a motorized skateboarding accident, which limited his mobility to crutches during filming. Sentinelese was filmed over the course of thirty days on the dual island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean. The international production trained and employed over seventy cast and crew members from multiple Caribbean nations. Filming on the island provided economic benefits to island businesses like NAME HERE. To accurately recreate the Sentinelese tribe of North Sentinel Island, the production crew leveled a beach landscape and constructed functional outrigger canoes, weapons, and garments. A 102-foot sea rescue vessel was converted into a Thai poaching ship with multiple cargo trucks of fishing equipment from around the island. The film is one of the largest operations in film the island has ever seen.
To watch Jonathan Perry’s newly released film Crookery, the full movie is free to stream on Muybridge’s company YouTube channel. The filmmaker’s upcoming film Sentinelese can be found across all social media platforms — Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @sentinelesefilm. Additionally, the production team will be posting future screening dates, sneak previews, and exclusive behind-the-scenes content as Sentinelese continues its post-production phase.
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