Vincent Carelli, 2009, 2010, 2011, Documentary, Brazil, 117min, Portuguese, English with English subtitles
Best Documentary
The $1000 prize for best documentary goes to Corumbiara (Brazil, 2009, Vincent Carelli) - a film crew’s 20-year quest to tell the world the story about modern day genocide in the heart of the Amazon. It is another feather in the cap of this powerful documentary, after winning Best Film at the 4th Latin American Cinema Festival in Sao Paulo and best feature-length Brazilian film at the 37th Gramado Film festival,
Film synopsis
In 1985, Marcelo Santos, a daring worker of the Brazilian Indian Affairs Bureau denounced a massacre of Indians in the lawless region of Corumbiara in Northern Brazil. Vincent Carelli filmed the evidence and since then followed the investigations making it a personal quest to discover the truth about a series of genocides in the region.
Together, Santos and Carelli take years to find the survivors, members of three previously uncontacted indigenous groups, living in hiding in the extant patches of forests, terrified of white men. Two decades later, Corumbiara shows the startling footage of that search and the Indians’ side of the story as they grow to trust Carelli’s film crew.
