Directed by Alison Reid
2018, Canada, 83 min

In 1956, four years before Jane Goodall ventured into the world of chimpanzees and seven years before Dian Fossey left to work with mountain gorillas, 23-year-old Canadian biologist, Anne Innis Dagg, made an unprecedented solo journey to South Africa to become the first person in the world to study animal behaviour in the wild on that continent. In The Woman Who Loves Giraffes, an older, wiser Anne takes us on her first expedition back to Africa where her trail-blazing journey began more than half a century ago. Retracing her original steps, Anne offers an intimate window into her life as a young woman, juxtaposing it with a firsthand look at the devastating reality that giraffes face today. Both the world’s first ‘giraffologist’, whose research findings ultimately became the foundation for many scientists following in her footsteps, and the species she loves have each experienced triumphs as well as suffering some nasty battle scars. The Woman Who Loves Giraffes gives us a moving perspective on both.