The Gorillas of my Grandfather

In 1902, German army Captain von Beringe had been the leader of an official expedition to the Virunga Volcanoes in today‘s Rwanda. He became the first European to encounter and describe mountain gorillas. He shot a mysterious black creature while climbing an unexplored volcano in Central Africa. From this chance encounter, a dramatic story began to unfold. The creature was a new species, a mountain gorilla. Decades of conflict and tragedy followed before the terrifying icon of King Kong was shown to be a myth by researchers such as George Schaller and Dian Fossey.

A hundred years after the discovery, Robert‘s Grandson, Andreas von Beringe, a Viennese doctor, sets out on a journey to retrace his Grandfather‘s adventures and to reveal the whole story of the mountain gorilla. We will take grandson Andreas on a trip to retrace the route of that expedition and relive, his grandfather‘s diary in hand, that memorable encounter with the hindsight of one hundred years of dramatic human-gorilla relations. Directed by Adrian Warren and Harald Pokieser. Produced by Cosmos Factory for ORF in co-production with DDE, WDR and NDR Naturfilm. German premiere May 18, 2004 (ORF)