Tribeca 2025 Review: YANUNI Tracks Daring Activist Fighting Pollution in the Amazon

The ongoing damage to the Amazon, through mining and clear-cutting forests, is too widespread to fully comprehend. Tack on former President Bolsonaro's anti-environmental policies, and it should be clear that the peoples of the Amazon basin are facing a catastrophe.

That's the unspoken context behind Yanuni, a documentary about activist Juma Xipaia. Shooting over a five-year period, director and cinematographer Richard Ladkani follows Yuma's political rise from being elected as the first female chief from the Xipaya territory in Middle Xingu to her role in the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples.

As captured by Ladkani's intimate camerawork, Juma is a natural politician. A fiery, aggressive speaker, she has some of the drive and appeal of Alexandria Ocasio Cortes. She delivers impassioned, articulate arguments against a government that spent decades exploiting indigenous groups.

Ladkani has followed Juma so long that he can edit together a seamless version of her stump speech delivered from several locations. He has access to Juma's flickers of doubt, to her frustration at being apart from her family, to unguarded moments when she is applying makeup or staring out a plane window.

Even so, Ladkani has to resort to titles and archival clips to flesh out Juma's life. We learn that she survived six assassination attempts almost in an aside.

Furthermore, the intense focus on Juma strips the film of much of its context. A presidential campaign in which Bolsonaro is defeated by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva barely registers. Ladkani relies on drone footage and news clips to try to convey what is happening to the Amazon, but in the beginning of the documentary, it feels like events are occurring in a vacuum.

All that changes during a demonstration at the capital city of Brasilia in 2021. Marchers want to preserve their land by limiting development. They are surrounded by police, who open fire after an off-camera explosion.

The marchers defend themselves against assault weapons and armored vehicles with bows and arrows and shields woven from bamboo. Tear gas spreads through the crowd. Yuma is overcome as she tries to comfort a wounded demonstrator.

When the stakes are presented in such tangible terms, viewers have a better sense of Juma's struggles. Once she enters the Lula administration's Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, the film documents her increasing disillusionment with politics. Endless meetings, panels, and conferences produce very little concrete progress.

Ladkani includes material about Juma's adolescent son Tuppak and her extended family in Middle Xingu. He also accompanies missions with her partner Hugo Loss, head of operations for IBAMA, a quasi-military organization that finds and destroys illegal mining operations.

When Juma learns that she is pregnant in 2023, Ladkani details her strained work/life issues. Realizing that her work helping indigenous peoples is not accomplishing enough, she notes that "Nothing much has changed about their reality."

Apart from relying too heavily on drones, and leaning too much on extreme close-ups, Ladkani is a solid documentarian. His work has been seen on National Geographic and Netflix, and two of his titles have been produced by Leonardo DiCaprio.

DiCaprio's presence is the most likely reason why Yanuni was chosen as the closing night film at the Tribeca Film Festival. Juma Xipaia is a worthy subject, and the problems in the Amazon basin deserve to be better known. This film is a good first step, although it will persuade few who don't already agree with its positions.

The film enjoys its world premiere at Tribeca Festival 2025. Visit its official page for more information.