Plot
A Kentucky woman named Dian Fossey (Sigourney Weaver) is inspired by an anthropologist Louis Leakey to devote her life to the study of primates. Traveling into deepest Africa, Fossey becomes fascinated with the lives and habits of the rare mountain gorillas of the Rwandan jungle. She has a romance with National Geographic photographer Robert M Campbell (Bryan Brown). Dian Fossey was also an occupational therapist although the film potrayed her as a physiotherapist as the film's director thought that profession was more recognisable to the general public. It was her training and the emphasis on the importance of communication that inspired her to study the gorilla's communication and social groups.
Appalled by the poaching of the gorillas for their skins, hands and heads, 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, burning down the poachers' villages, and even staging a mock execution of one of the offenders.
Fossey is mysteriously murdered on December 27, 1985 in the bedroom of her cabin, but her actions to help save the gorillas pay off greatly and the species is saved from extinction.
Read more about this topic: Gorillas In The Mist: The Story Of Dian Fossey
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