Help fund a documentary about Gorillas in Gabon!

Hi Everyone,

Few of you might know this but during the pandemic I moved to Gabon, not knowing exactly what my next step was. While this decision felt scary at the time it turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life as I found myself embarking on an amazing new journey as a TV presenter and eventually, environmental documentary film producer. In 2022 I received my first film grant from NEWF- Nature Environment and Wildlife Filmmakers, to make my first documentary about Western Lowland Gorillas in the South West of Gabon. They even invited me to their annual congress in South Africa where I met executives from National Geographic (NEWF is funded by Nat Geo Society), Netflix and Amazon. I am the first Gabonese person to ever receive this type of funding and one of the only nature and wildlife documentary filmmakers in the country, which is incredibly humbling.

Now- my amazing production team and I are about to set out into the field to film these amazing creatures in their natural habitat, but because of issues with customs, we are unable to bring in some of our filming equipment from overseas. This means we now have to scramble to rent equipment on location which costs 3x the price it would otherwise. This is why I am creating this go fund me- to help cover my last-minute rental fees and also some of my post-production costs. This has been a wild journey and I am so grateful to everyone who can help and support us in the creation of this film. I will of course make the film available for anyone who asks and you will be able to see it on my funder (NEWF's) platforms as well. We hope to make a splash in the film festival circuit for 2024 and show that African women have a place in the wildlife documentary space!

Thank you to my community, friends and family for believing in me and I cannot wait to share this movie with you all! Below is a brief description of the film if you're curious and feel free to message me for more details!

Best,

Kristina

Ndossi: a documentary film

For this short film, we will create a sensory cinematic experience of the Gabonese rainforest, which is introduced to us through the eyes of a young Gorilla "whisperer" as he embarks on a mission in the forests of Moukalaba-Doudou National Park. Miles away from base camp, he is accompanied by only a machete, the sounds and characters living in the forest and Gabonese folklore that he discovers along the way. On this mission, he meets the individuals leading the research on one of the most compelling and charismatic animals of the park: The western lowland Gorilla.

Gabon is a small central African country located on the equator between Cameroon and The Congo. It is covered at roughly 88% by equatorial rainforest and is home to some of the rarest fauna and flora on the planet. Hailed "Nature's Last Eden", large portions of its lush rainforest are still unknown to man.

Generally, even for native inhabitants, the closest contact to the deep forests of Gabon is done via the stories told by the eco-guards when they return to their villages or occasional hunters venturing in for bush meat. Those stories begin and conclude through the prism of human experience. This film picks up at that conclusion and uses it as a starting point to explore the forest not just as a space or environment but rather as a living organism in and of itself. Through this extralinguistic cinematic exploration, we shall use sound, reverberation, light, scale, and rhythm to immerse the viewer in this unfamiliar world and explore the various perspectives that make up its beating heart. Particularly, the echoes of the forest and the rhythm it creates lie at the very core of traditional Gabonese music. By mixing these elements, we tell the tale of not just this space, but the people that hail from it.