Gorillas in the Mist

Gorillas in the Mist is a 1988 movie which tells the true-life story of naturalist Dian Fossey and her work with gorillas. The film is based on a book writen by Fossey, describing her time in Africa studying gorillas. It is marketed with the tagline "At the far ends of the earth she found a reason to live, and a cause to fight for."

The screenplay was adapted by Anna Hamilton Phelan from an article by Harold T. P. Hayes and a story by Phelan and Tab Murphy. The original music score was composed by Maurice Jarre. The movie was directed by Michael Apted and the cinematography was by John Seale.

The movie stars Sigourney Weaver, Bryan Brown, Julie Harris and John Omirah Miluwi. It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Sigourney Weaver), Best Film Editing, Best Music, Original Score and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

Plot

A Kentucky woman, Dian Fossey is inspired by famed anthropologist Louis Leakey to devote her life to the study of primates. Travelling into deepest Africa, Fossey becomes fascinated with the lives and habits of the rare mountain gorillas of the Rwandan wilderness. Studying them at close quarters, Fossey develops a means of communicating with the gorillas, and in doing so becomes obsessed with the apes' well-being. She becomes so preoccupied with her vocation that she loses the opportunity of a romance with the National Geographic photographer Bob Campbell.

Appalled by the poaching of the gorillas for their skins, Fossey complains to the Rwandan government, which dismisses her, claiming that poaching is the only means by which some of the Rwandan natives can themselves survive. She rejects this, and dedicates herself to saving the African Mountain gorilla from illegal poaching and likely extinction. To this end she forms and leads numerous anti-poaching patrols, and even burns down the poachers' villages and stages a mock execution of one of the offenders. Fossey is mysteriously murdered on December 26, 1985, in the bedroom of her cabin.