Gorillas in the Mist

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.