A groundbreaking documentary reexamines a decades-old film about the first contact made with the Korubo tribe in Brazil and the “white man’s gaze”.
The film ultimately questions how those narratives are constructed and who they serve.
Amazomania
A hazardous expedition to the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, filmed in 1996, becomes a cultural and moral minefield in Amazomania, a thought-provoking documentary in which Swedish director Nathan Grossman (I Am Greta, Climate in Therapy) explores the “white man’s gaze” and turns the camera on colonial legacy and the film itself.
The first part of the film rewinds the tapes of the 1996 trip to meet the Korubo tribe, who chose to live far away from civilization. The expedition ended in a first encounter, with the footage hailed as a sensation, rare images from a long-hidden world.
The second part of Amazomania follows a journey back to the tribe 30 years later. But the trip doesn’t quite go as hoped. In the process, a profound misunderstanding is revealed. And the Korubo tribe demands compensation and insists on the right to tell its own story.
The resurfaced footage of the 1996 expedition forces the re-examination of the contact and the implications that followed, uncovering the costs of ‘discovery,’ the film confronts the colonial legacy and exposes the long-term repercussions for the Korubo.
- George Szalai, The Hollywood Reporter