The Last Forest

Luiz Bolognesi's 2021 Brazilian film is about the Yanomami community in the Amazon. Documentary observation alternates with staged sequences, and members of the community perform their own accounts. The film runs on two lines. On one side are the daily life of the village and the creation narratives; on the other the gold prospectors entering their land and the disease, pollution and violence that follow. Both are shown at the same scale. The script was written with the community's spokesman and the telling is largely in the Yanomami language. That keeps the film from being a documentary looking in from outside; the camera is positioned according to who has permitted it. Who it's for: those interested in indigenous narratives and documentaries about the Amazon. Who it's not for: viewers expecting linear information; the film tells mythology and the present without separating them.