Review: Amazon tribe shares its 1,000-year survival story in documentary ‘The Last Forest’

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Deftly avoiding the pitfalls of traditional ethnographic films, “The Last Forest” tells the story of South America’s Yanomami people — in their own voice and their own words. This isn’t a heavily narrated documentary about an indigenous population viewed through the filter of a white lens. Instead, though directed by Brazilian filmmaker Luiz Bolognesi, “The Last Forest” foregrounds the perspective of the Yanomamis, with their leader, Davi Kopenawa, earning credit as a co-screenwriter. The result is as poetic as it is insightful as the Yanomamis’ current experience coexists onscreen with their mythology.

The spare use of title cards — only at the film’s beginning and end — exists to add context, not commentary. The first one informs the audience that the Yanomami people have lived on their land in northern Brazil and southern Venezuela for 1,000 years, predating the founding of both countries. Encroaching gold prospectors and mining endanger their current existence as increasing development presents a danger to both the people and the earth.

“The Last Forest” seamlessly intercuts observed tasks and rituals with the Yanomamis’ reenactments of their myths, all of it vibrantly captured in Pedro J. Márquez’s cinematography. There’s little transition between the two, which initially feels discombobulating, but the approach offers a window into their everyday lives and beliefs. Together, Bolognesi and the Yanomami have crafted a film that reveals their largely unseen world while refusing to exoticize the indigenous group.