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The Kangaroo King claims Gold Panda

Australian production company WildBear Entertainment has won the Grand Prize International Gold Panda award at the Sichuan TV festival for feature documentary The Kangaroo King.

Kangaroo King is about the life story of Australia's iconic red kangaroo. 

The Gold Panda awards were held on Friday night in Chengdu, China, in a gala awards ceremony televised to millions of viewers across China.

The film's director/producer and one of the principals of WildBear Entertainment, Bettina Dalton, accepted the award.

Dalton said it was a great honour for The Kangaroo King to be recognised. 

"The red kangaroo is an iconic Australian species that is superbly adapted to the Australian landscape," she said. 

"Reds are highly adaptable and versatile, and face great challenges with the changing face of arid Australia, and their life story is remarkable and little seen by suburban Australians, let alone the rest of the world."  

The award is a continuation of WildBear's strong relationship with China and near Asia.  

WildBear has produced The Story of Australia for CCTV9, A Tale of Two Cities for Beijing TV and most recently Forever Young for CCTV2 which reached an audience of 275 million.  

The company also has in production The War That Changed The World with CCTV10.  

It also recently won an ACT Exporter of the Year Award for their export success in Asia and other markets.  

WildBear chief executive, Michael Tear said it was a great honour and privilege for the work to be recognised.  

"We value our relationship with China and are pleased that the judges recognise The Kangaroo King with such a prestigious award," he said.