an island sanctuary
an irreversible mistake
a tourism quandary
“When I heard about the plan to put chimpanzees on Rubondo, I was shocked…they were just dumped there.”
Rubondo Teaser
LOGLINEThe fastest growing colony of wild chimpanzees in Africa began as a 1960’s rewilding experiment cooked up by a controversial German celebrity conservationist playing noah on an uninhabited island in Lake Victoria.
Rubondo
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film summary
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Rubondo • film summary •
The story’s hero/anti-hero is an internationally famous zoologist/TV star/Oscar-winner hiding a secret Nazi past, Dr. Bernard Grzimek.
Little known now, in the 1960’s he was among the most famous conservationists in the world. He basically created the modern Seregeti Safari Park and then won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 1960, for Serengeti Must Not Die. Riding high on this international stardom and the safari tourism industry that he helped create in East Africa, he talked the newly installed leader of Tanganika into effectively giving him (his Frankfurt Zoological Society) a massive island in Lake Victoria for his insane ‘Operation Chimpanzee’ rescue mission. The untested, unscientific idea was to rewild a collection of ill-tempered chimpanzees languishing in zoos and circuses across Europe to this uninhabited island in Africa. No chimpanzees had ever lived on the island, there was no habitat analysis done, people living on the island had to be forcibly removed…but he just did it.
To Grzimek, it was urgent. He was saving his favorite animals from being sold to labs for organ harvesting (a thing in the 1960s), and in the process, kicking off his dream of creating a new ‘Great Ape Serengeti’ safari park.
Destruction, human displacement, chimpanzee attacks, wife-swapping, a fair amount of misery, bankruptcy and more ensued. But most of the chimpanzees survived it all. And the grandchildren of the chimpanzee settlers on this little-known Rubondo Island National Park, have very much made it their home and are now the only growing colony of chimpanzees living in the wild.
Why this film now
Climate change, habitat loss, and human-wildlife conflict are forcing conservationists to consider bold interventions—from assisted migration to rewilding. Rubondo is a rare real-world case study, showing that sometimes aggressive/radical translocations (aka the hardest rewilding imaginable) can restore biodiversity and create resilient refuges. As the world seeks scalable conservation models, Rubondo’s successes and failures offer compelling lessons. This hour-long (45-50 min) documentary traces the story of what happened on this island, explains a little about the man who made it all happen, and offers up some of the surprising conclusions scientists, naturalists, biographers and others draw from the surprising success of this little known and utterly unwise radical rewilding.
Where is Rubondo Island?
Located in the southwest corner of Lake Victoria—the largest lake in Africa—Tanzania’s Rubondo Island National Park is 28 km long and on average about five km wide. At 237 sq km, it is more than twice the size of city of Paris, and more than four times the size of Manhattan. A full three-quarters of the main island is covered with thick, Conoglese-style forests.
Including the surrounding protected waters and other islets, the total area of this African Ark is over 457 square kilometers, almost eight times the size of Manhattan and more than four times the size of Paris.
Some of the many issues
forced Relocations
Grzimek wrote extensively about how humans are a problem for animals to overcome in many of his 20+ books, including No Place for Animals. He saw his Serengeti National Park project as a partial failure because he wasn’t able to convince the leaders of the country to move the Maasai off the land in the Serengeti. He wanted assurances for his next project in Tanganika, Rubondo, that there would be no human residents of the island to interfere with the creation of his new African Ark. This was fine with the new president of Tanganika, Nyerere, who wanted to move more of his population to the cities to jumpstart the new country’s economy. So he made sure that all the residents of Rubondo were removed from the island before the chimpanzees arrived.
Tourism Challenges
The new generations of chimpanzees born on the island are reluctantly being habituated to humans, but seem surprisingly fearful and suspicious. Possibly dangerously so. As a result there is no precise count of how many of them there are living on the island. And with the chimpanzee population largely living far from the one safari camp on the island, and mostly avoiding contact with humans, the island is far from an ideal tourism experience.
That's a concern because tourism is what brings in much of the money that supports the park and keeps it (and its animals) protected. The island currently hosts around 1000 visitors a year. The small safari camps on the island have lost money since opening, because tourists who travel from far away to the island want to see the chimpanzees - but more often than not, they aren’t able to. And that doesn’t sit well with most people have having spent thousands of dollars to get there and days of trekking into the vast inhospitable forest.
An Unclear Nazi Past
Grzimek always acknowledged being in the German army during World War II. But his story was that he only joined the party when he needed to, and played a minor role. Which turned out to be not entirely the case. Biographer Claudia Sewig discovered that he signed up for the Nazi Party well before the war, in 1936, and was an officer in charge of Nazi agricultural efforts. He was also seemingly close with at least some in Hitler’s circle, including Leni Riefenstahl.
Much of his life reads like a series of unlikely adventures, but none more than his escape from Berlin at the end of the war. With the Russians advancing on the capital, Grzimek opted to desert rather than be sent to the front, and is spirited away by his pregnant mistress out of besieged Berlin, stuffed into a giant chest and drove him through checkpoints off to the Western Front, where he surrendered to the US Military and ended up being given the role as director of the bombed out Frankfurt Zoo.
He’s also thought to have housed and saved several jewish people during the war while living in Berlin, so his past in the Nazi army is not what some had thought it was.
Interviews Include
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![Dr. Jane Goodall]()
“Rubondo should never have happened.”
Dr. Jane Goodall
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![Dr. Christof Schenk]()
“There was no habitat survey done prior to their arrival.”
Dr. Christof Schenk, Frankfurt Zoological Society
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![Peter Matthew]()
“We are doing the habituation differnently"
Peter Matthew, Tanzanian Parks
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![A man with glasses and light hair sitting in a leather chair, background of bookshelves filled with books.]()
“My grandfather wasn't one to ask permission, he would just rush ahead.”
Christian Grzimek
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![Hamza Zaragoza]()
“These chimps are very different, they’re bigger, body morphology wise than others in Africa.”
Hamza Zaragoza, Asilia
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![David Tibanywana]()
"Why are our lives less important than these chimpanzees?"
David Tibanywana, former resident
Production Stage
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Shooting
We are heading back in Fall 2026 to shoot with the habituators, and the park’s chimpanzee experts. We will also reshoot a few interviews in Germany and the UK that were done via Zoom during the pandemic.
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Post-Production
We are very excited about all our fantastic archival footage and still photos from the history of the island, but are waiting to finish post until after we finish shooting on the island in late-2026.
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2027 Release
Grzimek won the 1956 audience award at the Berlinale for his film Bambuti, so our plan is to release Rubondo 70 years later at the Berlinale in 2027 then license for distribution.
I was aware our project had its dangers…but I was delighted to give these chimpanzees back their freedom.
Dr. Bernhard Grzimek