Journey with Brazilian filmmaker Denise Zmekhol to the Amazon rainforest in search of the indigenous children she photographed fifteen years earlier. CHILDREN OF THE AMAZON invites you to see through the eyes of these inspiring, remarkably resilient people whose lives are transformed by a road carved through their forest home by an outside world. From Chief Amir Surui’s embattled efforts to stop illegal loggers to the assassination of legendary rubber tapper Chico Mendes, this poetic and visually stunning film engages our senses and sympathies as global issues take on a profound human perspective.
CHILDREN OF THE AMAZON - ONLINE STREAMING
“...a moving and powerful film...in the most sympathetic way possible, highlights the human side of rainforest destruction, which is all too easily forgotten as we confront the challenges of global climate change.”
For countless generations, the Amazon rainforest provided a home to the Surui and Negarote people who lived in what they called “forest time”— utterly beyond the realm of contemporary human life. Their only contact with the “outside” world was through rubber tappers, who first settled the forest in the 19th century and whose work did no harm to the trees.
This cinematic journey combines intimate interviews with my personal and poetic meditation on environmental devastation, resistance and renewal. The result is a unique vision of the Amazon rainforest told in part by the indigenous people who experienced first contact with the modern world less than forty years ago. The young adults are the now grown and navigating a risky course between cultural preservation and economic survival.
As I near the end of my journey, I discover how the combined efforts of indigenous people, rubber tappers, and their allies have begun to safeguard the rainforest. Ultimately we grasp our own intimate connection to this remote forest and its people: we are all children of the Amazon — breathing the same air, walking the same planet and in some sense that we have yet to understand, sharing the same fate.
