Brazil, documentaries, film festivals, Hugo Loss, Juma Xipaia, movies, reviews, Richard Ladkani, Tribeca Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Yanuni
June 16, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Richard Ladkani
Portuguese and Xipaya with subtitles
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Yanuni” features a predominantly Indigenous group of people (with some white people and Latin people) who are connected in some way to Brazil-based environmental activist Juma Xipaia.
Culture Clash: Xipaia became the first female chief of her tribe and experienced resistance and assassination attempts in her activism to protect the rights of Indigenous land.
Culture Audience: “Yanuni” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Felix and are interested in documentaries about athletes who became activists.
Occasionally unfocused but always compelling to watch, “Yanuni” is a laudatory documentary about Brazilian environmental activist Juma Xipaia. Her story is an example of fearlessness and tenacity in the face of various obstacles. As a person, Xipaia is a passionate and inspiring leader who doesn’t believe in using extreme tactics that would be counterproductive to the causes she supports.
Directed by Richard Ladkani, “Yanuni” had its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. The movie is a fairly straightforward chronicle of her life in 2022 and 2023, when most of the documentary was filmed. In 2015, at the age of 24, Xipaia became the first female chief of the Middle Xingu region, leading the village of Tukamã. In 2023, she became the Secretary of Articulation and Promotion of Indigenous Rights for Brazil’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, which was formed that year to give Indigenous people better representation in Brazil’s federal government.
The documentary follows Xipaia as she participates in protests, political summits, and meetings with various people in her battles to protect Indigenous land. The Ministry of Indigenous Peoples got some inevitable backlash from certain people who felt that the ministry was not acting quickly enough for its intended goals. Xipaia was inevitably on the receiving end of some of this backlash, which affected her.
At times, the movie seems to also be about her husband Hugo Loss, the leader of special operations for Brazil’s IBAMA agency that shuts down illegal mining. (IBAMA is an acronym that translates in English to the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources.) A significant amount of screen time shows what he does in his job. Xipaia and Loss seem to have a supportive relationship throughout the challenges of their marriage, including their job travels requiring the spouses to spend time apart from each other.
The documentary doesn’t gloss over some of the dangers involved in their work. During a harrowing part of the movie, Xipaia watches a friend die in front of her during a protest that becomes violent. In another scene, Loss and some of his team members frantically try to escape death when their boat is chained to an illegal mining boat that has just exploded. Xipaia, who has survived assassination attempts, gets tearful when she talks about the emotional pain of being separated from her children when her children sometimes have to be sent to live in another home for the kids’ safety.
The movie shows Xipaia and Loss to be devoted parents, as they raise son Tuppak Tawary Xipaia (her biological child from a previous relationship), who was about 4 or 5 years old at the time. The documentary also chronicles her pregnancy journey with the spouses’ daughter Yanuni Xipaia Loss, who was born while this documentary was being filmed. Xipaia says of her ongoing environmental battles and the resistance she gets from people: “The greatest destruction isn’t in the Amazon but mainly in people’s minds.” “Yanuni” gives a fascinating inside look at what it takes to be a dedicated environmentalist, but it’s also a sobering account that a lot more progress needs to be made.