Amazomania

In 1996, the indigenous Korubo people lived in complete isolation in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil. All attempts at contact had failed, while claiming more than 200 lives. Documentarian Erling Söderström, along with a group of international journalists, and the country’s commissioner for isolated indigenous tribes, set out for the forest to make another attempt.
The material that Söderström shot at the time makes up the first part of the film. In the next section, an older Söderström returns to the rainforest to visit one last time the places and people who marked his path in life. But the portents have shifted. The Korubo want to tell the story of that long-ago encounter from their own perspective. They are no longer willing to serve as objects for the white gaze, and demand the rights to their own image. The situation erupts into open conflict and Söderström is forced to question his ideas about life remote from civilization, which are as romanticized as they are egocentric.