Comedian and television icon Ellen DeGeneres is set to return to the silver screen nearly one year and a half after she announced her retirement from her talk show. But this time, she returns to debut her documentary on her conservation work in Rwanda.
DeGeneres, who together with her partner, Portia de Rossi, established the Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund located in Musanze District, Northern Province, will premiere the documentary dubbed 'Saving the Gorillas: Ellen’s Next Adventure’ on September 23.
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The highly anticipated two-hour documentary, filmed in partnership with Discovery Channel, will mark her return to the silver screen following the end of her long-running talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which she drew curtains on after its 22-season run in May of 2022.
The new two-hour special focuses her on her work in Rwanda and will be streamed on Discovery+ and Max. The Discovery Channel can be found on DStv.
In addition to streaming on those platforms, the documentary will have an encore presentation on September 24, in honour of World Gorilla Day.
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Upon retirement, DeGeneres emphasised that she would be dedicating most of her time to her mountain gorilla conservation efforts in Rwanda through her project which was unveiled in February 2022, with a mission of keeping the legacy of primatologist Dian Fossey alive.
Discovery Channel and Animal Planet will air the documentary which was produced by Christopher Collins, Lydia Tenaglia, and Craig H. Shepherd for Zero Point Zero Production along with DeGeneres and Jeff Kleeman. It was directed by Abigail Harper.
DeGeneres teamed up with Discovery Channel for the documentary to highlight her "passion and commitment to animals, and admiration for world-renowned primatologist, Dian Fossey.”
"What begins as Portia de Rossi’s simple desire to come up with a nice birthday gift for her wife, Ellen DeGeneres snowballs into something bigger than anybody could have imagined.
"The couple find themselves embarking on one of the largest architectural and landscaping projects in the history of Rwanda, only to collide with challenges like volcanoes, earthquakes, and a global pandemic,” the announcement states.
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"Every single thing has led me to just have a big enough platform to say, ‘Look at work Dian Fossey did,’” DeGeneres says in the documentary. "There’s nothing that keeps you more present, more in the moment, than sitting with gorillas.”
Since its opening back in 2022, the campus has assisted in gorilla conservation and local biodiversity. It additionally hosts visitors. So far about 40,000 people have visited the green campus located near the Volcanoes National Park.