Infant gorillas, like their adult counterparts, seem to have an easy life in the jungles of Virunga in central-east Africa. Netflix’ A Gorilla Story: Told By David Attenborough shows these gorillas do things like lying down and relaxing. But there’s more to their life, as these gorillas, the Pablo group, are undergoing changes of leadership.

A Gorilla Story‘s A plot concerns the power dynamic within the Pablo group, with aging patriarch Gicirasi. On the rise is Ubwuzu, fighting Gicirasi and succeeding and both able to coexist as family members. Not everything is friendly though, as Ubwuzu sees a threat in the Imfura, who undergoes changes within himself.

As the entire title suggests, A Gorilla Story‘s main curatorial voice is environmentalist David Attenborough. But credit is due to the documentary’s director James Reed, whose work includes enviro-docs like Bears. Other critics dismiss his work as cutesy but both have high stakes coming with seasonal or generational changes.

This environmental documentary provides enough context for its viewers so that we know what’s behind the scenes. Some of that contextualization comes from inter-titles so we know Gicirasi from Ubwuzu and Imfura and so on. A Gorilla Story even shows Attenborough at the comfort of his home, narrating the history of the group.

A Gorilla Story also has an interesting sense of time, making the group’s power transition seem easy. The group’s namesake, Pablo, gives the documentary an inherent relatable factor as it shows archive footage of him. He started his group at 18, the same age when generations of humans mark the beginning of their adulthood.

A Gorilla Story, clocking in at 77 minutes, gives its viewers enough understanding of the dynamics of gorillas. It depicts the reality that Pablo’s isn’t the only group in the jungle – even the gorillas know this. The sound design captures how Imfura can hear the other groups that have their own dominant silverback males.

Ubwuzu, by default, is one of A Gorilla Story‘s villains, although Imfura can be one too. Although even if Imfura is only a secondary subject, the documentary smartly uses him needing to explore. In doing so, it is able to shift to one of the forest’s other species – the human beings.

A Gorilla Story‘s depiction of humans, good and bad, have as much nuance as the gorillas. Archive footage shows gorilla poaching, which thankfully decreases and instead the human mostly leave the gorillas alone now. The gorillas coming into their own means that generations of silverback alphas can live on and survive.

A Gorilla Story is only available to stream on Netflix.