Attenborough Revisits Rwandan Gorillas 48 Years Later
SkimNews Take
The film's focus on individual gorillas' struggles for dominance, even amidst species recovery, highlights how fundamental biological imperatives persist regardless of broader conservation successes.
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- A Gorilla Story, directed by Oscar-winner James Reed and executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, revisits the Rwandan gorilla family David Attenborough filmed 48 years ago for the BBC's Life on Earth.
- Rwanda's gorilla population has recovered from near-extinction in the 1970s thanks to conservation work catalysed by Dian Fossey and the attention Attenborough's original footage brought to the animals.
- The Pablo Group, the family Attenborough met, is now led by aging silverback Gicurasi, with a younger challenger named Ubwuzu asserting dominance by beating Gicurasi and a young gorilla Imfura — who eventually kills Ubwuzu's baby in retaliation.
- Attenborough, who turns 100 in a few weeks, reads from his diaries about the original encounter and particularly mourns Pablo, the gorilla who grew into a successful silverback only to be killed at 33 protecting his family from a rival group.
- The reviewer's chief complaint is pacing: the deeply characterized gorilla family dynamics are crammed into just over an hour, giving the film a 'whistlestop' feel when a series-length treatment would have done it justice.
- Attenborough has released this as his second new project in two weeks, which the reviewer reads as evidence he has 'no truck with nostalgia' — though every on-screen appearance now feels elegiac given his age.
Why it matters: The documentary captures a stark two-tier story: Rwanda's gorilla population is a conservation success story, yet the specific family Attenborough met has turned over entirely, with violent power struggles now defining the group. For audiences, it lands as one of the final chances to watch a 100-year-old Attenborough narrate new natural-history work, reading from his own diaries about animals he has tracked for nearly five decades.
