Environmental Selection

Jane – USA (2017)

Directed by:  Brett Morgan

No one had studied Africa’s chimpanzees in the wild before 26-year-old Jane Goodall set up camp in Tanzania’s Gombe forest. This documentary, using never-before-seen 1960s footage by famed National Geographic photographer Hugo van Lawick, captures that revolutionary encounter. Narrated by Jane herself – with a moving original score by Philip Glass – shows the young researcher at work, jade eyes focused, her wry smile barely hiding her disbelief that her childhood dream has come true. As the chimpanzees grow to trust Jane, she sits among them, until she’s feeding and grooming them. Jane fell in love in Africa: with science, with the animals, and with Lawick, whom she married. Yet Jane kept returning to Gombe and her wild family. Today, Jane’s loose ponytail is white, but her message, which still rocks science, is unwavering – intelligence and compassion are not ours alone – but shared. Thus, we must protect Africa’s wildlife.

Premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 10, 2017