Ofir
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Ofir Drori and rescued chimp Future
In 2003, after years of amazing journeys exploring Africa, Israeli activist Ofir Drori started to be drawn to some sense of greater purpose within the continent that had provided so much to him. As his travels brought him from the beauty of the Savannah to the horrors of war torn Sierra Leone and Liberia, Ofir felt it his responsibility to report on what he was learning. Contemplating Jane Goodall's dark prophecy that the extinction of apes in the wild is imminent, Ofir set out to write a story about the heroes working on the front lines to protect these endangered species. Instead, he discovered that no one was doing anything. After rescuing an orphaned chimp from a poacher, Ofir decided that he was the man for the job. Ofir - a wildlife crime documentary chronicles the infancy of The Last Great Ape (LAGA), the NGO that Ofir founded to start enforcing wildlife laws that were already on the books but had never been applied; before Ofir's arrival in Cameroon, not one person had ever been convicted of a wildlife crime in all of West and Central Africa. Using a network of spies and informants to gather evidence with concealed cameras in sting operations, Ofir began to battle the corruption that permeates every aspect of life in Cameroon. He began to put the offenders in prison, often while fostering an orphaned ape who had no where else to go. Ofir is a man on a mission and through his endeavors the power of activism becomes clear. One man can still make a difference.

In 2011, Ofir approached filmmaker Mark McDannald with the roughly 50 hours of random footage that he had accumulated during those first years of the NGO. Though Ofir believed the tapes were a lost cause, Mark quickly recognized that there was enought in them to make, at the very least, a compelling short film; so, he got to work building the narrative from scratch, and when he had finally finished, Mark had a powerful, gritty, emotional feature-length documentary on his hands.