In 1989, disgruntled evolutionary biologist Dr. Joseph L. Popp, recently passed over for a World Health Organization position, unleashed a strange new weapon on the world: the first known ransomware. Disguised as an AIDS information questionnaire, the floppy disks he mailed to health organisations worldwide encrypted hard drives after multiple reboots and demanded payment to a post office box in Panama. The attack caused global disruption, erasing research and overwhelming investigators who eventually traced the scheme back to Popp. But as his mental state deteriorated into paranoia and delusions, he was deemed unfit to stand trial and released on grounds of insanity.

But this film is not about “catching” a criminal or reconstructing an investigation. It is the anti-thesis to the true crime documentary.

Before the ransomware scandal, Dr. Joseph Popp was an evolutionary biologist obsessed with primates. He worked in Kenya studying baboons, believing their social structures held clues to human behaviour. This unlikely scientific path, fieldwork, baboon troops, and primate psychology, makes his eventual plunge into digital sabotage even more bewildering.

This is a creative documentary about legacy, consequence, and the emotional archaeology of a life that history has flattened into a meme.