Gorillas in the Mist narrative location Africa
Gorillas in the Mist is a 1988 American biographical drama film directed by Michael Apted from a screenplay by Anna Hamilton Phelan and a story by Phelan and Tab Murphy. The film is based on the work by Dian Fossey and the article by Harold T. P. Hayes. It stars Sigourney Weaver as naturalist Dian Fossey and Bryan Brown as photographer Bob Campbell. It tells the story of Fossey, who came to Africa to study the vanishing mountain gorillas, and later fought to protect them.
The film was theatrically released in the United States by Universal Pictures on September 23, 1988. At the 61st Academy Awards, it earned five nominations, including Best Actress for Weaver and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. The film won Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for Weaver and Best Original Score for Jarre at the 46th Golden Globe Awards, where it was also nominated for Best Motion Picture – Drama.Plot
Occupational therapist Dian Fossey is inspired by anthropologist Louis Leakey to devote her life to the study of primates. She writes ceaselessly to Leakey for a job cataloging and studying the rare mountain gorillas of Africa. Following him to a lecture in Louisville, Kentucky in 1966, she convinces him of her conviction.
They travel to the Congo, where Leakey and his foundation equip her to make contact with the gorillas, and introduce her to a local animal tracker, Sembagare. Settling deep in the jungle, Fossey and Sembagare locate a troop of gorillas, but are displaced by the events of the Congo Crisis and forcibly evicted from their research site by Congolese soldiers, who accuse Fossey of being a foreign spy and agitator.
Fossey is resigned to returning to the United States, but Sembagare and her temporary host Rosamond Carr motivate her to stay in Africa. Fossey establishes new research efforts in the jungles of neighboring Rwanda, where rampant poaching and corruption become apparent when she discovers several traps near her new base at Karisoke. Nevertheless, Fossey and her colleagues make headway with the gorillas, taking account of their communication and social groups. Her work impresses Leakey and gains international attention.
National Geographic, which funds her efforts, dispatches photographer Bob Campbell to highlight her research. Fossey, initially unreceptive, grows increasingly attached to Campbell after several photo sessions with the gorillas, and the two become lovers, in spite of Campbell's marriage. Campbell proposes to divorce his wife and marry Fossey but insists that she would have to spend time away from Karisoke and her gorillas, leading her to end their relationship. Fossey forms an emotional bond with a gorilla named Digit, and attempts to prevent the export of other gorillas by trader Van Vecten.
Appalled by the poaching of the gorillas for their skins, hands, and heads, Fossey complains to the Rwandan government and is dismissed, but a government minister (Waigwa Wachira) promises to hire an anti-poaching squad. Fossey's frustrations reach a climax when Digit is beheaded by poachers. She leads numerous anti-poaching patrols, burns down the poachers' villages, and even stages a mock execution of one of the offenders, serving to alienate some of her research assistants and gaining her various enemies. Sembagare expresses concern at Fossey’s opposition to the emergent industry of gorilla tourism, but she nonchalantly dismisses his worries.
On December 27, 1985, Dian Fossey is murdered in the bedroom of her cabin by an unseen assailant. At a funeral attended by Sembagare, Carr, and others, she is buried in the same cemetery where Digit and other gorillas had been laid to rest. Sembagare symbolically links the graves of Fossey and Digit with stones as a sign that their souls rest in peace together before leaving.
The epilogue text explains that Fossey’s actions helped save the gorillas from extinction, while her death remains a mystery.