If you’re expecting to ride out the apocalypse in a deluxe bunker, you might want to consider the visionary wisdom of Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa, a central figure in The Falling Sky. “When the earth transforms,” he says at one point in the documentary, “you can have all the money you want. You can run away with the money, but when the stormy winds come, you won’t be able to silence them.”
Filled with beauty and fury, the film offers an immersive portrait of an endangered community. The specifics are those of the Yanomami people: their struggle to maintain a way of life in sync with nature, and to withstand invading forces of greed and commerce that treat nature as a source of wealth to be plundered. But the calamity that Kopenawa warns of is a global one. We’re in this together, and, if the looting of the planet continues unabated,...
Filled with beauty and fury, the film offers an immersive portrait of an endangered community. The specifics are those of the Yanomami people: their struggle to maintain a way of life in sync with nature, and to withstand invading forces of greed and commerce that treat nature as a source of wealth to be plundered. But the calamity that Kopenawa warns of is a global one. We’re in this together, and, if the looting of the planet continues unabated,...
- 5/20/2024
- by Sheri Linden
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
For about the first hour of their documentary “The Falling Sky,” Brazilian directors Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha introduce us to the traditions and ongoing plight of the Yanomami Indigenous people — namely, fending off invaders — without making their presence known. There are no title cards stating where we are and why, and the only voiceover we hear comes directly from the Yanomami, most often Davi Kopenawa, their current leader and co-author of a 2010 book bearing the same title as the film.
But then, following a hypnotic ritual under the night’s sky, Justino Yanomami, an elderly Yanomami, retells the tragedy of his first encounter with white missionaries and the violence and disease they spread in their Amazonian land. With his face illuminated by a raging fire, an emotional Justino looks directly into the lens, directly at the filmmakers and at us, and asks, “Are you really going to be our allies?...
But then, following a hypnotic ritual under the night’s sky, Justino Yanomami, an elderly Yanomami, retells the tragedy of his first encounter with white missionaries and the violence and disease they spread in their Amazonian land. With his face illuminated by a raging fire, an emotional Justino looks directly into the lens, directly at the filmmakers and at us, and asks, “Are you really going to be our allies?...
- 5/19/2024
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Variety Film + TV
Brazilian directors’ Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha’s “The Falling Sky” delves into lives of the Amazonian Yanomami people, who live in the heart of the Amazon rainforest where they are contending with a harsh humanitarian crisis caused by the massive invasion of wildcat miners searching for gold and cassiterite, a mineral used in electronics. This unique doc – which launches in Directors Fortnight – is inspired by the thoughts, expressed in an eponymous book, of Davi Kopenawa, a shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami who performs the reahu ritual, a collective ceremony to hold up the sky and prevent it from falling.
The directors spoke in unison to Variety about why the Yanomami’s struggle against miners transcends the woes of their land and how their cosmology can help heal our planet as a whole.
What drew you to this project?
In the book Davi Kopenawa says that it...
The directors spoke in unison to Variety about why the Yanomami’s struggle against miners transcends the woes of their land and how their cosmology can help heal our planet as a whole.
What drew you to this project?
In the book Davi Kopenawa says that it...
- 5/19/2024
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
China-based international sales agent Rediance has acquired world sales rights to “The Falling Sky,” a feature documentary which will premiere next month at Cannes in the Directors Fortnight section. Directed by Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha, the film makes the Amazonian Yanomami people its stars.
Based on the book of the same title by shaman and Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa and French anthropologist Bruce Albert, “The Falling Sky” portrays the indigenous community of Watorikɨ as it engages in a funeral rite known as the reahu, which is a collective effort to hold up the sky and prevent it from falling.
The film stands as a trenchant shamanic critique of the destruction of the Yanomami’s way of life caused by the intrusions of the napë, the white prospectors and the so-called civilized world into the Yanomami territory.
“The spellbinding images, meticulous sound design, and powerful words of Davi...
Based on the book of the same title by shaman and Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa and French anthropologist Bruce Albert, “The Falling Sky” portrays the indigenous community of Watorikɨ as it engages in a funeral rite known as the reahu, which is a collective effort to hold up the sky and prevent it from falling.
The film stands as a trenchant shamanic critique of the destruction of the Yanomami’s way of life caused by the intrusions of the napë, the white prospectors and the so-called civilized world into the Yanomami territory.
“The spellbinding images, meticulous sound design, and powerful words of Davi...
- 4/23/2024
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
Sônia Braga to be honored during opening ceremony
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures Of Ghosts will open the 15th Hollywood Brazilian Film Festival running November 6 to 11.
The documentary, this year’s Brazilian submission for the Oscars, explores the picture palaces of Filho’s hometown of Recife. It will screen at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and premiered in Cannes Special Screenings. US distributors are Grasshopper Film and Gratitude Films.
Sônia Braga, star of Kiss Of The Spider Woman and Filho’s Aquarius and Bacurau, will be honoured during the opening ceremony
The year’s line-up was curated by Thiago Macêdo Correia,...
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures Of Ghosts will open the 15th Hollywood Brazilian Film Festival running November 6 to 11.
The documentary, this year’s Brazilian submission for the Oscars, explores the picture palaces of Filho’s hometown of Recife. It will screen at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and premiered in Cannes Special Screenings. US distributors are Grasshopper Film and Gratitude Films.
Sônia Braga, star of Kiss Of The Spider Woman and Filho’s Aquarius and Bacurau, will be honoured during the opening ceremony
The year’s line-up was curated by Thiago Macêdo Correia,...
- 10/24/2023
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
“Only in our forest can you sleep in peace,” says Davi Kopenawa, a shaman and elder of the Yanomami community — the indigenous population of the rainforest terrain on the Brazilian-Venezuelan border. His words, enticing as they sound, aren’t an invitation to visitors, but a warning to his own. As the Yanomami’s unchanged, elemental way of life competes with the lure of the developed white world across the river, Kopenawa and his peers will say what they must to discourage younger generations from venturing away, and to keep their thousand-year-old culture intact. There’s more than fusty conservatism at play here, however. History has grimly proven that the white man isn’t merely a threat to the Yanomamis’ collective soul, but their individual bodies.
Luiz Bolognesi’s illuminating, enveloping documentary “The Last Forest” makes these stakes clear, and prizes Kopenawa’s point of view over that of the dazzled observer.
Luiz Bolognesi’s illuminating, enveloping documentary “The Last Forest” makes these stakes clear, and prizes Kopenawa’s point of view over that of the dazzled observer.
- 4/24/2021
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
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