Award-winning filmmaker Kalyanee Mam, and conservationist Rebecca Kormos, worked with Guinee Ecologie Founder Mamadou Saliou Diallo, to film the chimpanzees of Guinea, and to speak with local community members about their relationship with the chimpanzees. They gathered myths and stories that describe how connected and intertwined the relationship between chimpanzees and people is, and has been, for hundreds of years and how this sacred relationship has ensured the protection of the chimpanzees in Guinea, especially in the Fouta, where there is the highest concentration of chimpanzees in all of West Africa. Sadly, new looming threats, risk to change all of this. Both people and chimpanzees are being pushed out of their homes by bauxite mining, precious resource extraction and hydroelectric power projects. Once sharing the same water source and fruits of the land, both now struggle to even survive in areas where the mining has begun. Rebecca, Kalyanee and Saliou have worked with award-winning screenwriter Chris Brown to put these interviews together into a powerful short documentary film that tells of this unique relationship between chimpanzees and people in Guinea, and how the mining of Guinea's bauxite impacts not only the chimpanzees, but the people's welfare as well.

Director: Rebecca Kormos & Kalyanee Mam
2020 | 19 min
Guinea
Language: English
Subtitles: English