Telluride: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's latest documentary follows four siblings stranded in the Colombian jungle for 40 days after a fatal plane crash.
In many ways, the 2023 crash of the Cessna Stationair in Caquetá feels like a story tailor-made for a National Geographic documentary. It has everything you'd expect from a National Geographic film: human survival against the elements, abundant nuanced political and cultural context to delve into, a heartbreaking backstory that slowly unravels throughout the film, and abundant nature bonus features.
Directors: Jimmy Chin, Juan Camilo Cruz, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
The film NatGeo ultimately produced about the event, "Lost in the Jungle," arrives a bit late (Netflix beat them to it by almost a year with its narrator, "The Lost Children"), and isn't a standout among the company's films. But the subject matter is compelling enough and the cinematography solid enough to make it a compelling film despite its minor flaws.
“Lost in the Jungle” was directed by the now-separated husband-and-wife team of Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, and they collaborated with Juan Camilo Cruz on this film. Vasarhelyi and Chin are no strangers to National Geographic, having directed one of the company's biggest hits, 2018's “Free Solo,” a thrilling and challenging account of one man's attempt to climb El Capitan.
Compared to that Oscar-winning production or other films like NatGeo's “The Rescue,” “Lost in the Jungle” is a bit more concise in its presentation, combining spoken-word voices, dimly lit reenactments, and some previously unseen footage to chronicle the authorities' 40-day search for four missing children in the Colombian jungle.
Beginning with a (somewhat slow) reenactment of the incident that led to it, “Lost in the Jungle” quickly lays out the facts of the tragedy. On May 1, 2023, Magdalena Mucutuy Valencia, an Indigenous Witoto woman, boarded a chartered plane bound for the village of San José del Guaviare, where she intended to surprise her husband Manuel. In the air over the Amazon rainforest, the plane suffered engine failure and crashed, killing her, the pilot, and local Indigenous leader Herman Mendoza Hernández. The only survivors were Magdalena's four children, ages 13 to infancy, who were stranded and injured in the wilderness with no idea how to escape.
For those unfamiliar with the incident, there is (perhaps thankfully) little tension surrounding the possibility of the children being found and rescued. Throughout the film, there are narrated sections by the eldest daughter, Lesly, who recount the animals and dangers the children faced during their extended period stranded in the jungle. In the film's only true visual flourish, these scenes are animated, often translucent and transparent, with additional footage of the actual forest. It's not an entirely successful approach—it has a strange, distancing effect on the reality of their desperate situation—but it achieves moments of genuine visual beauty.
On the other hand, "Lost in the Jungle" lays the groundwork to immerse you in the tragedy and, thankfully, avoids treating Magdalena as a mere afterthought. Flashbacks and interviews with friends and family slowly paint a portrait of a loving mother and a fun, vibrant woman, as well as of the abuse she and her children suffered at the hands of Manuel, the father of her two youngest children and stepfather to Lesly and her brother Soleiny. Manuel himself appears in interviews, and while the film gives him ample space to share his side of the story and his involvement in the rescue effort, it never lets his misdeeds slip away. In one poignant moment, a relative speculates that their father's voice might be forcing the children to hide from the rescue team.
In many ways, the 2023 crash of the Cessna Stationair in Caquetá seems like a story tailor-made for a National Geographic documentary. It has everything you'd expect from a National Geographic film: human survival against the elements, abundant political and cultural context with nuances to explore, a heartbreaking backstory that slowly unravels throughout the film, and abundant additional nature footage.
The film NatGeo ultimately produced about the event, "Lost in the Jungle," arrives a bit late (Netflix beat them to it by almost a year with its narrative "The Lost Children") and doesn't stand out among the company's films. However, the subject matter is compelling enough and the cinematography solid enough to make it a compelling film despite its minor flaws.
As the documentary shows through footage of the rescue efforts, all these external tensions make the two rescue groups reluctant to collaborate, until the government orders the special forces team to use the indigenous search party's knowledge of the jungle to their advantage. Through interviews with members of the special forces team, "Lost in the Jungle" traces how the military gradually opened up and accepted their very different counterparts, and how the group's collaboration proved essential to the mission's success. And to its credit, "Lost in the Jungle" largely manages to avoid the trap of portraying indigenous culture solely from the perspective of white Colombians, offering numerous interviews to discuss the spiritual practices they used to aid in the search.
If there's one problem with "Lost in the Jungle," perhaps it's its scarcity. At 90 minutes long, the film is fast-paced and efficient, but leaves little time to explore more about the collaboration between these two search groups, or the uneasy relationship between the region's Indigenous communities and the narco-guerrilla units that govern them. The film ends on a hopeful note, explaining where the children have ended up in the intervening years and culminating with footage of a Colombian official giving a speech about how the search should initiate a new phase of understanding between the government and the Indigenous communities. It's a somewhat perfunctory, overly optimistic ending to a certainly captivating and well-told story, which also had the opportunity to delve deeper.
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