It was while she was in hiding after recovering from the sixth attempt on her life, that the activist Juma Xipaia got a call asking if she would agree to be the subject of a documentary. The first female chief of the Middle Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon, Xipaia was well known in Brazil for her passionate attempts to protect her indigenous community from the effects of deforestation, illegal gold-mining and – in particular – the catastrophic environmental consequences of the $11 billion Belo Monte hydroelectric dam project, a wildly ambitious and destructive endeavour that has affected livelihoods, fish stocks, ecosystems and biodiversity, with legal challenges still ongoing today.

Thirty-four-year-old Xipaia’s outspoken resistance and exposure of corruption relating to the dam’s construction led to the threats on her life. The last attempt was by poisoning, via a food delivery company, which resulted in her being on a ventilator with 70 per cent organ failure. She was on the verge of death, when, she says, she had a dream that she was given a choice – to take the easy path of dying, or the difficult path of coming back, and because she’s a fighter, that’s the one she chose. And a week later she walked out of the hospital.

Like many activists representing indigenous communities she walked a tightrope between protecting the interests and traditions of her people, and not being perceived as standing in the way of progress in terms of the economic development that benefits Brazil as a whole, a paradox that was defined when President Lula da Silva regained power in 2023, and brought Xipaia into government.

Richard Ladkani, a film director who has made vibrant environmental documentaries such as The Ivory Game (about poaching) and Sea of Shadows (marine activists), was the man who called her. It was 2019, when Brazil was still under the brutal rule of Jair Bolsonaro and destruction of the Amazon was at its peak – an area of rainforest the size of Belgium was burned during his presidency, and thousands of illegal goldmines flourished, contaminating the forest, polluting the river with mercury (mercury is used to bind gold) and bringing crime and disruption to previously pristine areas.

“All summer long we had seen these dramatic apocalyptic images,” says Ladkani. “And I was posing for photos at the premiere of Sea of Shadows, with [executive producers] Leo DiCaprio and Jane Goodall, when Leo leaned over and whispered, ‘So Richard, what’s next?’

“And I said, ‘We’ve got to do something about the Amazon.’”

DiCaprio came onboard as producer, and Goodall as an ambassador. Ladkani knew he had to find a powerful central figure to provide human and emotional context, someone who would be the voice of the Amazon. He drew up a list of possible candidates, until the Brazilian journalist Eliane Brum told him “do not make a decision until you have spoken to Juma Xipaia – when she speaks, the world listens. She can silence a whole room with her energy.”

Right now, in a small restaurant in New York, Xipaia is not really in the mood to talk. It is February, and it’s snowing, and Ladkani, Xipaia and her husband, Hugo Loss, are here to publicise the resulting documentary, Yanuni – which took six years to make – at a screening attended by UN representatives and Brazilian diplomats. The recent news about Trump’s exploits in Venezuela has shaken them all and, more specifically, Juma has had a bad experience with American food which doesn’t really agree with her. She is a little reticent at first, but soon opens up with the help of an interpreter, and explains to me what it meant to be a cacique (chief), and how she was selected.

“I never chose to be a cacique,” she says, “but I couldn’t stay quiet in the face of exploitation of my people – there was violence, and women being harassed and raped.” She is referring to the collateral damage that importing thousands of workers to build a dam inevitably brings. “Usually the role of cacique is given to the oldest male in the community – my dad and my uncles and my brother were all caciques, but the elders knew that they could trust me never to negotiate our rights with corporations or politicians, never to compromise. For a long time I had been seen as a soldier, an army of one. I accepted the position for two years, with the goal of strengthening on our territories and bringing sovereignty to our people.”

Xipaia was born in 1991 and had an idyllic childhood, she says, growing up in Tucumã, a small indigenous community along the Iriri River, about 250 miles west of the city of Altamira. They lived in wooden houses and ate fruit and nuts from the forest and fish from the river, and in 2006 she moved to Altamira for her education. But threats were encroaching her community, with land opened up for mining and farming, and in 2011, a licence was granted to construct the Belo Monte Dam, to stop up parts of the Xingu River, one of the most species-rich areas of the Amazon.

Aged just 21, Xipaia spoke out against the dam at a public hearing, but despite lawsuits, protest from indigenous people and large sections of society, construction went ahead. Xipaia attended law school in Altamira and studied plans put forward by Norte Energia, the company that built Belo Monte, helping to expose corruption that was going on within. In 2015, at the age of 24, she became a cacique, the first female leader of her people. Other communities had been bought off by Norte Energia with gifts of stoves, fridges, TVs.

In November 2019, she led a protest of angry Brazilian landowners and farmers to disrupt the Amazon: Center of the World international conference in Altamira. But by now she had become a target, and by the time Ladkani called her she had survived six attempts on her life, including her car being rammed with children in the back, and a threat to kidnap her son. She went into hiding for a year and she didn’t want to talk to anyone.

“She thought, the only way I’m going to survive is if I stop talking, because when I talk, people want to kill me,” Ladkani says. But she was finally convinced to take a call from him, and from the first moment, he says, he knew he had found the voice for his film. “Her poetry is the thing that stands out – the way she can describe emotions and feelings and put things into context, I felt it was unique. And when she told me the story of how she almost died because of the poisoning, I was in tears.

“I told her I wanted her to be the voice in the film and also offered her the role of producer. Because I knew nothing of indigenous life and I needed her to lead the way.”

It was a struggle from the word go. Xipaia was not happy about a translator being involved because of security reasons; she couldn’t trust anyone. So Ladkani, who is Austrian, took intensive lessons in Portuguese and within six months was fluent. “It was a key thing to show that I meant business and took her concerns very seriously,” he tells me.

The security budget for the film was huge, they needed the best, most experienced people: safe houses, secure drivers. And the arrangements had to extend for a year after filming was completed – a total of seven years. “Leo was extremely important here because he raised the first third of the budget, and this encouraged other philanthropists to be part of it.”

Filming began in 2020. There was no script and Ladkani didn’t know what he was going to get from it, just that he needed to tell the story of the pillaging of the Amazon via Xipaia’s voice.

And in the end it was a wild ride: it started with Xipaia leading protests against Bolsonaro, but after Lula was elected in 2023, he established a Ministry for Indigenous Rights, of which Xipaia was made state secretary, implementing a series of bills for the protection of the forest and employing lawyers, biologists and engineers to combat the destruction of the Amazon.

The film documents her move from her village to set up home in Brasilia with her son; getting together with her husband Hugo Loss, head of special operations for Ibama (the Brazilian Institute of Renewable and Natural Resources), an elite outfit conducting raids on illegal mines; and the birth of their first child, who was called Yanuni.

It was a lengthy, exciting journey, an improvisation which resulted in thousands of hours of film. “I just had to go with the unpredictable. The strength of any documentary is when unforeseen things happen, because a twist in direction is the greatest thing of any film structure.

“And we had that multiple times. I had chosen a woman to be the voice of the Amazon and two years later she became the second most powerful woman in the Indigenous Ministry – I get goosebumps now at the sheer luck. That was the first twist, and then Hugo enters her life, who happens to be this charismatic soldier of an elite force who would take me to the frontline of the Amazon resistance, and then Juma becomes pregnant and gives birth to Yanuni. Holy s**t. If I had written that as a script, everyone would have thrown it out as complete fiction.”

Leo DiCaprio was a producer on the film (rather than his usual role of executive producer), which meant he was far more involved. “He not only provided the money, but he gave me meaningful support throughout the production,” says Ladkani. In November 2021 DiCaprio attended Cop 26 in Glasgow, where he met Xipaia for the first time. “That meeting was spectacular – Leo posted a picture of the two of them together and said that she was one of the most incredible people he’d ever met.” The resulting attention helped to protect Xipaia, because a public profile is to some extent a safeguard. “There she is next to DiCaprio, so she’s not just a voiceless indigenous person from somewhere in the Amazon.”

There were many technical challenges. Because of security, Ladkani couldn’t film in the normal way, with lighting and a crew. “I had a second cinematographer, a brilliant guy from Brazil, called Fábio Nascimento, and I took him with me when I could – but that was only 30 per cent of the time. The rest I shot alone. I downsized my gear and basically shot the film with a DSLR, like a photo camera, so I looked like a tourist. To an outsider, I was just a white gringo taking pictures.” Xipaia had a hidden microphone beneath her shirt. If Ladkani was ever confronted, he claimed to be a YouTuber.

“Security demanded that we shot the film incognito, and that became its strength, because I was embedded within the family to the extent that they stopped noticing me,” says Ladkani.

Hugo Loss’s job involved protecting indigenous communities and flying over the forest and rivers of the Amazon routing out illegal goldmines, dredgers and excavators. His small team lands, arrests the miners and sets fire to all the expensive equipment, which is too bulky to confiscate. In the film we see massive plumes of thick black smoke rising above the forest. Penalties for environmental crime are insubstantial, but, says Loss, “It’s not for President Lula to change those things, it’s Congress, and it’s hard to change the law. But destroying the equipment is a real deterrent, because the machines are expensive, so it’s a risky investment.”

Loss and Xipaia met when her village was attacked in 2020 by illegal goldminers; she was in Altamira, a two-day boat ride away. She put out a cry for help on social media and Loss, who was also in Altamira, saw it and responded right away. He picked Xipaia up in a helicopter and asked her to take him to the exact location of the miners’ dredger. The attackers spotted them and ran, but Ibama were able to seize their boat and secure the area. “He saved her village and her people and her parents from an immediate attack and they fell in love and have been together ever since,” says Ladkani.

“I’m usually very shy about these things but from the first time I saw her in the helicopter I couldn’t stop thinking about her,” admits Loss. “Three months later I was doing an Ibama operation on land to remove some illegal loggers and I saw a hawk’s nest and I took a picture of it and sent it to her,” says Loss.

“It’s the bird whose feather I wear in my headdress,” interrupts Xipaia, shyly. She admits that she had first met Loss before the helicopter ride, at a meeting, but he was leaving as she arrived. “He shook my hand and I made eye contact with him and something told me – I can’t really explain what – that he was going to be my husband.”

Loss holds a Master’s degree in social anthropology from the University of Brasília and is one of Ibama’s most experienced field agents, yet he spent a good part of his career sidelined by Bolsonaro, who had no interest in protecting the environment. In February 2023, under Lula, he was appointed Ibama’s coordinator of enforcement.

Loss has taken part in hundreds of operations. His job is a dangerous one. We watch him flying helicopters over swathes of forest to spot mines, or patrolling the rivers looking for dredgers. Recently one of his team was killed in an ambush, another got burns over 60 per cent of his body.

Ladkani asked to accompany Loss on a raid. “Hugo told me, it’s too dangerous, the risk of you dying is too high. It’s a small team, and you would be taking the place of a soldier on the helicopter so we would be down one security man, which means our job is much harder, and by the way, if we get into a gun fight, we are not your bodyguards, we are there to finish a job. You would have to save yourself.

“I said, how dangerous is it? And he said, ‘Well, the risk of you dying is 50 per cent.’ I laughed – and then I realised he wasn’t joking.

“Of course I had to think about that – I have a wife and two daughters. My wife and I discussed it. She grew up in a war zone in Beirut, so she understands threats, and how you can mitigate risks as well. She is also the producer of this film. We have had a long journey together – making conflict zone films like Sea of Shadows and The Ivory Game was no joke. But this one felt like a different level because of the 50 per cent quote.” He smiles.”‘I did hostile-environment training and we augmented the security to a degree where I felt it wasn’t 50 per cent any more.”

So Ladkani joined the team, and the resulting episode is terrifying: they are patrolling the river when they find a huge illegal dredger, used for gold mining. They board the dredger, its crew of illegal miners are put in a small boat and dispatched, and Loss’s team set fire to it. Attempting to get away, they realise their boat is still attached to the dredger by a chain, and they have only moments before an oxygen tank below the deck of the dredger explodes. Loss has to shoot the chain, but he has to hit it while it is taut, or the bullet would glance off. “The oxygen tank is steel and if it had exploded we would have been killed by the fragments if we were within 100 metres of that boat – and we were six metres away. It was Hugo who shot the chain – it took 50 shots at least. When Juma saw that footage she broke down and sobbed,” says Ladkani.

Do you like your job? I ask Loss.

He smiles. “Yes I do.”

Back in the 1970s, when two major roads were originally carved into the Amazon rainforest, of which 60 per cent is in Brazil, it opened it up for settlers to devastating effects – the population of the Brazilian Amazon quadrupled and millions of acres of trees were cut down for timber or land clearance and farming, and the rivers became polluted. Thousands of garimpeiros (prospectors) arrived, bringing disease, destruction and violence.

Despite the protected reserves created by Lula during his first tenure (2003 to 2011), when Bolsonaro took over, he vowed that he would not demarcate a single millimetre of Indigenous land.

There was reason to be hopeful when Lula was re-elected in 2023, especially when he created the Ministry for Indigenous People. But it was an uphill struggle, and Xipaia left the post of State Secretary after about two years, and retired to her territory, where she still is. “She realised that it would be years, if not decades, before change could happen and she felt that her power was with activism from the front lines rather than being in an office in the city,” says Ladkani. “And what really hurt was her children having to grow up in the city and not having the connection to nature that she had.”

There has been a lot of progress, Juma says, compared to the Bolsonaro years “when it was genocide”. “It is hard to quantify all the changes because even though there was a change in the administration, it is important to understand that the government structure is very colonialist, no matter who is in power, and everything takes time. I entered the ministry when it was just being born.

“It was hard working in an office every day and not spending time with my children, and my son Tuppak [eight] told me that he wanted to go back to the forest, he was having a hard time at school in the city. I did not want to rob my son of that kind of childhood – being in the territory and getting his knowledge from the forest.”

I ask Loss and Xipaia if, with the way things are now, they are more inclined to hope or despair. “Most of the time I don’t think about the future,” says Loss. “I just focus on doing my work, one operation at a time.”

Xipaia thinks. “It depends where I am. When I’m in the forest with my family, there is immense fulfilment which is hard to explain; it gives me the hope and energy to keep wanting to protect it, and I want the whole world to get to know it.

“When I walk through the forest and harvest food there with my family and my people, it reminds me of what my ancestors were doing. The innocence of children, the idea of clean water, food without toxins – this gives me hope.”

“I don’t feel despair,” says Ladkani. “I feel like we’re in a war. There are plenty of good people fighting back, and that gives me hope. And there are lives on the line that we need to care about, which is the indigenous people, who are the frontline of our defence. They are defending nature for us so we need to make sure that they are heard and seen and respected. And we hope that the film puts a human face to that.

“We can’t pretend that destroying the biggest ecosystem on the planet is OK. If we lose the Amazon, we all lose.”

Yanuni is now streaming for free on Leonardo DiCaprio’s YouTube channel

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