Film: Birdwatchers

The tourist cruise boat chugging up the Amazon pauses for another photo opportunity. A dozen or so tribesman with clay-daubed faces and loincloths are discovered posed like a tableau: a colourful addition to the rainforest fauna. The boat marks time for a beat till the natives, glowering resentfully, fire off a stream of half-hearted arrows. Then it quickly revs up and motors on. But wait: a reverse angle shot shows the action from another perspective. The rubberneckers barely out of sight, the naked savages hurriedly swop their loin cloths for t-shirts and trainers, and flock to collect their commission from the tour operator who has ferried them there.

Birdwatchers, opening Friday, is a film with a mission: to unveil the harsh reality behind the exotic spectacles of eco-tourism (even if nothing in it quite matches the impact of its terrific opening sequence). In the Mato Grosso of south-western Brazil, the indigenous population has become extinct at an average rate of one tribe every two years. Among those threatened are the Guarani, whose traditional hunting grounds have been despoiled by intensive farming and ranching: the end credits contain a plea for support and a reference to their website. A macaw might be a holiday highlight for the visiting bird buff, but, for a Guarani, it's lunch.

One day some tribespeople decide to move from their ring-fenced reservation and settle near their ancestral burial ground. It is, unfortunately, also yards from the ranch of a tour operator, who is not best pleased with his new neighbours. They're fine as local colour but not in his back yard. Much of the following can be guessed at, as hostilities escalate and erotic tensions simmer between the youngsters (and not-so-youngsters) from the two enemy camps. But, working with non-professionals from the Guarani community, Marco Bechis, the film's Chilean-Italian director, creates some lovely individual sequences and character portraits.

There's the patriarch, his broad, kindly face creased with despair and anxiety, who drinks and drinks and drinks; the shy youngster haunted by disturbing visions which mark him out as his tribe's next shaman; his spirited mother who proves herself the heart and soul of the group (the white characters are rather less well-developed, however). The soaringly beautiful choral music is by Domenico Zipoli, a Jesuit musician-missionary who worked with the Guarani in Paraguay in the early 18th century, and the final confrontation has an eerie, wholly unforeseen punch.

Birdwatchers website

Brazilian film festival website