
Children of the Jaguar
For decades the Huaorani of eastern Ecuador were barely known even to neighboring tribes, a people who held roughly 20,000 square kilometers of Amazon forest and fought off oil companies and the government to keep it. Most now live inside Yasuni National Park, a million-hectare reserve UNESCO named a biosphere reserve in 1989 for its density of life: more than 500 bird species, 173 confirmed mammal species, 62 snakes, over 100 amphibians, and upward of 100 tree species per hectare, compared with 40 in Central America's richest jungles. The film follows Ñame, who leads his family away from Quehueiriono, a settlement of 160 people on the Shiripuno River where resources have thinned out, to a new camp two days' walk away. Footage tracks the household through the forest canopy and floor, where monkeys and birds keep to the trees for safety while predators below stay constant. The result is part natural history of one of the ten most biodiverse places on earth, part record of a single family's move to keep feeding itself.