The film, based on the true story of George and Joy Adamson and their adopted lion cub Elsa, tells the story of a young lioness who is raised by humans in the African savannah. As Elsa grows into a strong and independent lion, she must learn to survive on her own and find her place in the wild.

The two older cubs, fierce and independent, were eventually sent to a zoo in Rotterdam. But Elsa—the smallest, the most curious, the one who looked at Joy not as a keeper but as a mother—stayed.

In the shimmering heat of the Kenyan savannah, Elsa the lioness was never quite like the others. She was born under a gnarled acacia tree, but not to a wild lioness—not really. She was born into the hands of Joy and George Adamson, the two people who would come to define her world, and hers would come to define theirs.