Few environmental documentaries begin with quite the urgency that “Yanuni” does. Even fewer blend political thrills with meditative visual poetry, but Austrian director Richard Ladkani strikes this balance with an even hand in his intimate chronicle of Juma Xiapaia, a brave Indigenous activist in Brazil and the first woman elected chief in the Amazon’s Middle Xingu region.
A fierce figure usually seen with tribal face paint and a feathered headdress, Juma is introduced through archival news clips from 2009, in which the smiling but forceful teenager commits to the Indigenous cause, claiming she’s ready to die for her people. Six assassination attempts later, the now-adult chieftain appears during a 2021 demonstration outside the National Congress Palace in Brasilia, which turns violent when riot police open fire on protesters. Juma and the camera are both near enough to the chaos to see muzzle flashes up close. This is just one of several scenes in “Yanuni” that feels truly dangerous in its telling.
Moments of terror in imposing metropolises are deftly contrasted with the serenity of forest land. The camera doesn’t just depict this natural beauty, but practically becomes one with it, soaring above the trees alongside flocks of birds and nestling itself among insects as it glares up at sunlit canopies through gentle leaves. To talk of a people’s connection to the land is one thing. To make your audience feel it is entirely another, and Ladkani appears to take his cinematic cues from Juma’s proclamations about this deeply spiritual dynamic.
As the film follows the young leader from her urban political gatherings back to her rural village (alongside her toddler son), the soundscape is enveloped by calming rhythms. However, these too are engulfed by the cacophony of destructive drilling sites that deforest the land and pollute the water with mercury in search of gold. All the while, Juma and her fellow activists stand firm and gain political ground, but this leads to its own complications. The 2022 defeat of President Jair Bolsonaro, plus the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, yield nominal victories for Indigenous folks, including the appointment of Juma to a newly created position, which feels like a near and natural conclusion to “Yanuni.” However, the story is just getting started.
What follows is among the most traditionally dramatic film depictions of real events, rife with romance, political intrigue and even military action. It might ordinarily feel condescending to discuss harsh realities in such specifically movie-centric, genre-heavy terms, but “Yanuni” is nothing if not cinematic in its portrayal. As Juma navigates a political labyrinth, she’s forced to reckon with becoming a cog in the very machine she once fought. Meanwhile, her new helicopter pilot husband Hugo (who her son is adorably fond of) is charged with leading armed missions on behalf of IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental protection agency. His aim is to scout and target illegal mining outfits throughout the Amazon, which Ladkani captures like imposing sea monsters appearing over the horizon. The camera, all the while, follows these heroic militarized troupes along dangerous operations, which inevitably end with Hugo and his comrades setting drilling equipment and makeshift homesteads ablaze — at the risk of not making it home to their loved ones.
It’s hard not to be thrilled by “Yanuni” despite its somber subject matter — especially when it so effectively inverts the traditional language of military cinema. The high-tech mercenaries, like Hugo, are the unequivocal “good guys” for once. Their violence is aimed more at destructive machines than at the pirates operating them. Similarly, overhead shots of smoke plumes rising from the forest have long been symbols of destruction on film, but here, since they emanate from drilling platforms and bulldozers, they represent a reprieve. And unlike war films where a soldier’s wife sits diligently at home, waiting for his return, Juma is seen leading vital battles of her own on the legislative front lines, in a tale of political disillusionment that forces her to pave a brand new path.
“Yanuni” begins with flashes of violence wrought upon Indigenous tribes, but it gradually refashions violent imagery through an anticolonial lens. In the process, it captures a hopeful, revolutionary spirit, but it grounds these notions within the poetry of nature, through some of the most enrapturing, awe-inspiring landscape photography this side of Ron Fricke and Godfrey Reggio. It’s the kind of movie deserving of enormous canvases like full-frame Imax or the Las Vegas Sphere, but its ultimate goals are emotionally intimate. Its politics are entirely rooted in the perspective of its leading couple, thus making inseparable its altruistic abstractions — like caring for one’s land and the environment at large — from protecting the people we hold most dear.
variety.com
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