‘Yanuni’ Review: Tribeca Fest Closes With Timely and Inspiring Eco-Doc

In 2009, 18-year-old Juma Xipaia announced that her destiny would be “fighting for the Indigenous cause. Standing up for my people. My life,” she added with understated prescience, “is going to be one of struggle.” Just six years later, she became the first female chief of the Middle Xingu, in Brazil’s Amazon basin. Since then, she has led a movement for international protection of the Amazon, survived half a dozen assassination attempts, studied law and medicine, served as Brazil’s first Secretary of Indigenous Rights, and become a mother. She is currently 34 years old.

For five years, documentarian Richard Ladkani (“Jane’s Journey”) embedded himself and his crew with Juma and her husband Hugo, the head of Special Operations for Brazil’s EPA. Though she is the primary focus, the result is an inspiring portrait of two undeniably remarkable environmental advocates. We are by their side as they experience both unexpected highs and devastating lows, which are impacted dramatically by the nature of Brazilian politics. When the autocratic Jair Bolsonaro is elected, the fate of the Amazon declines severely, and when he is defeated by the socially liberal Lula, there are hints of promise and even progress.

Juma is a producer on the film, which does undermine any sense of objectivity; “Yanuni” is as reverential as a portrait can be. But it also ensures immediate and intense access, allowing us to be present wherever she and Hugo may be: political meetings, raids on illegal mining camps, the hospital room where she gives birth.

Leonardo DiCaprio is also a producer, which adds a bit of gloss to an unexpected choice for the Tribeca Festival’s closing night film. But to the festival’s great credit, this unabashedly sober, openly political eco-doc is not a typical gala entry. Without a high-profile slot at a major festival, a film like this might very well get overlooked. As Juma clearly knows, when there is no end to exploitation, there is no rest for the exploited.

Which is, likely, why she wanted to participate in a documentary like this one. Land grabbing, mining, overfishing, logging: the avaricious claims on the Amazon and its Indigenous people are nearly endless. And every time she and Hugo expose or destroy one group of evildoers another appears, ready to make money while contaminating water, poisoning children, starving villages.

“We’ve been at war for a very long time,” Juma explains. The Amazon “is not just a forest. She’s our mother. She is knowledge, and the cure. They’re invading, stealing our territories. Our sacred place, home of the enchanted, of our protectors, of the animals, and the rivers they are drying up.”

The world may never free itself of corrupt leaders, or the careless opportunists who follow them like parasites. Which means that not only do we need more activists like Juma and Hugo, we need to know more about them, too. “Yanuni” is an ideal place to begin.

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