The Award-Winning Documentary Short about the World’s Leading Expert on Orangutans
▼
The Award-Winning Documentary Short about the World’s Leading Expert on Orangutans
▼
The Award-Winning Documentary Short about the World’s Leading Expert on Orangutans
▼
The Award-Winning Documentary Short about the World’s Leading Expert on Orangutans
▼
The Award-Winning Documentary Short about the World’s Leading Expert on Orangutans
▼
In the jungles of Indonesian Borneo, where the trees have stood for millions of years and wild orangutans still move through the canopy as our closest living ancestors, Explore.org traveled from Los Angeles to the remote river banks of Camp Leakey. Their mission at first was simple: to explore installing live nature cameras to monitor wild orangutans in their natural habitat. There they met Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas. The journey took on a new purpose.
So moved were they by her devotion to this forest and its creatures, the Explore crew began documenting the experience. From those four days, this film was born.
ABOUT THE FILM
Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas has spent over fifty-four years in this corner of the world. One of Louis Leakey's legendary Trimates alongside Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, she arrived in Borneo in 1971 and built her life there. Her study of wild orangutans is the longest field study of any mammal by a single researcher in scientific history. She founded the Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) which today protects thousands of acres of rainforest and has guided over 500 animals back into the wild. Saving Our Ancestors is her story.
In March 2026, Dr. Galdikas passed away at the age of 79. Her son Fred Galdikas now carries the torch at OFI, alongside the researchers and conservationists she inspired across a lifetime of work. The orangutans she spent her life protecting are still there, in the canopy watching, waiting for her to return.
MEET EXPLORE
Charles Annenberg Weingarten founded Explore.org on a conviction that bearing witness to the world's most extraordinary lives changes the people who watch. Today Explore operates one of the world's leading philanthropic live nature camera networks, streaming unfiltered footage of wildlife to millions of viewers from around the world around the clock. The cameras never stop, because nature never does.
Explore has also produced over 250 original films and 30,000 photographs documenting the scientists, healers, and visionaries from who have given their lives to causes greater than themselves.
Saving Our Ancestors began as a fact-finding mission to Borneo, to explore whether Explore's live cameras could observe wild orangutans at Camp Leakey. What Charlie encountered there moved him in ways he did not anticipate. So inspired was he by Dr. Galdikas, by her deep spirituality, her wisdom, and her fifty plus years of quiet devotion, that he set out to make a documentary film for the first time in over a decade. She rekindled something in him that the world is now fortunate to witness and take part in.
The orangutans Dr. Galdikas spent her life protecting share 97% of our DNA. They are our closest living relatives, and they are disappearing.
The Orangutan Foundation International was established by Dr. Galdikas in 1986 and remains one of the most effective wildlife conservation organizations on the planet. OFI rescues orphaned and displaced orangutans, rehabilitates them, and releases them back into the wild. It protects thousands of acres of rainforest in Indonesian Borneo and runs community education programs that give local populations a stake in conservation. Since its founding, OFI has guided hundreds of orangutans back to freedom.
This film was made to shine a light on that work. Dr. Galdikas is gone, but the mission she gave her life to continues under her son Fred and the dedicated team she built over fifty years.
The forests are still standing. The orangutans are still there. They need our help.