"Virunga," Film Bids For Oscar Glory

"Virunga" - screen grab of promotional trailer

A film about Virunga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site in eastern Congo has been described as an Oscar-contending documentary, GRAPHITTI NEWS learned.

The film brings action and suspense to the nature genre. Its real-life cast includes Andre Bauma, an endearing ranger who tends orphan gorillas; chief warden Emmanuel de Merode, an urbane Belgian descended from nobility; and Melanie Gouby, a French freelance journalist who records shadowy figures on a hidden camera in scenes that make for tense viewing, according to AP.

The dramatic events unfold in the visually rich landscape of Virunga, a jewel of biodiversity that has forests, swamps, savannah and active volcanoes, and is home to about a quarter of the world's remaining mountain gorillas and to various armed groups.

The dramatic events unfold in the visually rich landscape of Virunga, a jewel of biodiversity that has forests, swamps, savannah and active volcanoes, and is home to about a quarter of the world's remaining mountain gorillas and to various armed groups.

"I probably could have filmed it on a mobile phone and people would have still said, 'Oh, it looks beautiful,'" director Orlando von Einsiedel said in an interview with The Associated Press. And yet, he said of the park: "Very few people have heard of it."

The nominee for best documentary feature, whose executive producer is Leonardo DiCaprio, is getting high-profile attention ahead of the Feb. 22 Oscar awards in Hollywood. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton attended a recent screening of "Virunga" in New York. Primatologist Jane Goodall described it as a "wake-up call."

The documentary was released on Netflix in hopes of reaching the widest possible audience, and positive publicity has seemingly helped to tilt the conservation battle, and a broader effort to create a sustainable economy, in Virunga's favor for now. Tourism is up, donations have surged and hydropower projects and other job creation schemes are progressing, von Einsiedel said.

But Virunga remains vulnerable, the park's backers warned. Over 140 park rangers have been killed in the last 15 years, according to von Einsiedel.

"There are still a great many very serious security issues," de Merode, the warden, said in an interview. "These are all problems that relate to illegal extraction of natural resources."