PRIMUS
The last howler monkey in the region, Encantado searches for a troop but finds only his own reflection. Allan, a local young man, recognizes himself in that loneliness and seeks a different future for himself and his species.
In Southeast Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, Encantado is the last survivor of a yellow fever epidemic that silenced his troop. Without the chorus of his own species, he spent years interacting with his reflection in car mirrors — a behavior never before documented in primatology. Allan de Souza, 28, chose to stay in his hometown when his generation moved to the cities. He recognized in Encantado’s isolation a loneliness he knew from the inside, and decided not to let this animal become another extinction statistic.
His journey takes him across Brazil’s largest primate conservation projects — from Muriqui House to the helicopter rescue of Operação Peçanha, and finally to primatologist Karen Strier’s forty-year study of muriquis, the largest primates in the Americas, who resolve all conflict through prolonged embrace. PRIMUS begins with loneliness and moves toward what we believe is one of our most ancient virtues: cooperation.