How a new documentary captured Florida's competitive python hunt
In 2022, Xander Robin booked a room at a Miccosukee casino at the edge of the Everglades and joined in the Florida Python Challenge.
Every year, hundreds of hunters flood South Florida for a state-sponsored killing spree aimed at the invasive Burmese python. At the end of the 10-day challenge, Florida awards the hunter with the most kills a whopping $10,000.
Despite riding along with hunters each night of the challenge, Robin didn't see - let alone slay - a single snake. But he did walk away with lots of ideas for a documentary.
"It just sort of felt like people pretended to be a certain way online - that they knew what they were doing, and then on the ground were just completely making it up as they went along," Robin said in a Zoom interview. "Mostly, I found that it was a sensory overload just being out there, and I really wanted to capture what that felt like, which is, you're just going mad in the middle of the night looking for this thing, and you start to hallucinate."
He returned to the Everglades for the 2023 challenge to follow an eclectic cast of snake seekers. Their stories shine in his new film, "The Python Hunt," which opens at St. Petersburg's Green Light Cinema this weekend.
Burmese pythons are native to Southeast Asia. Thanks to the exotic pet trade, the animals have spread across the Everglades over the last 30 or so years - and caused an ecological disaster.
Most of the documentary's filming took place over a 12-day period, with overnight shoots stretching until 4 a.m. or later. The crew gathered some 250 hours of footage and whittledit down to a tight 91 minutes.
"I was excited about how nocturnal it was, because that's been my life forever. For some reason I can never sleep until like 4 or 5 in the morning, just since I was a kid," Robin said. "But also, being out there made me start to question things, and I think I started to gravitate to people that were also questioning."
Robin grew up in the suburbs of South Florida, dazzled by the lizards that skittered along his path.
He went on to study film at Florida State University before moving to New York City. An idea for a film about a reptile-obsessed character lured him back home. But after shooting it for fun, he wasn't done telling Florida stories.
With better film incentives available in other states, filmmakers often recreate Florida in places like Georgia or New Orleans. Since Robin wanted to actually shoot in the Everglades, not a swamp somewhere else, the nonfiction route seemed like the way to go.
"You can't fake that," he said.
Robin met two of the subjects of the film during his first hunt: Richard Perenyi, a science teacher from San Francisco who heads into the swamp for a drug-fueled vacation, and Jimbo McCartney, an ex-professional hunter determined to expose the challenge as a gamified media circus. He's also keen to mess with the out-of-state "yahoos" like Perenyi.
"The challenge itself is 95% amateur hunters," Robin said. "The only ones that really get the publicity are the professionals, but actually on the ground it's everyone trying to be the professional."
The heart of the film lies in the bond between Anne Stratton Hilts and Toby Benoit. She's a nature-loving, 82-year-old widow who wants nothing more than to "scramble the brains" of the snakes destroying native animal populations. He's an eighth generation Florida cracker, a Hernando Sun columnist and her devoted guide.
"She's at a place in her life that this would be one of her last adventures, and maybe she wanted to show off a little bit to her folks at the nursing home," Robin said. "But she thought there'd be pythons everywhere...and then there's basically no pythons around."
To follow multiple storylines, Robin deployed three different groups, consisting of a unit director, field producer, cinematographer and sound recorders.
Producers include Lance Oppenheim (director of the 2020 documentary "Some Kind of Heaven," on The Villages retirement community) and Lauren Cioffi (an executive producer of HBO's "Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God"). Cinematographers Matt Cleg and David Bolen set out to capture a dreamy sequence of visuals, from moody sunsets and writhing snakes to flashlights dancing along swamp water.
"The thing I really wanted to make sure we captured properly was the nighttime stuff, because being out there it doesn't feel scary or terrifying or like a horror film," Robin said. "You're running into people at 4 or 5 in the morning, and you're excited to run into someone and wondering if they're finding anything.
"There are moments where you're just like, ‘This place wants me dead,' (and) getting destroyed by mosquitoes. There's also moments of, ‘This is alsoso spiritual, so majestic, so otherworldly.'"
Watch "The Python Hunt"
"The Python Hunt" (2026) is a documentary directed by Xander Robin. It has a runtime of 91 minutes. It is not rated.
The film opens at Green Light Cinema (221 Second Ave. N., St. Petersburg) on Friday and runs through Thursday.
It will be shown at the Tampa Theatre's John T. Taylor Screening Room (711 N. Franklin St., Tampa) from June 19 through June 25.
Screenings will also take place starting June 19 at Sun-Ray Cinema (12332 University Mall Court, Tampa). Showtimes have not yet been announced.
To learn more, visit pythonhunt.oscilloscope.net.
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This story was originally published May 29, 2026 at 9:17 AM.