A UN report in 2021 described the Indigenous peoples of Latin America as the “best guardians” of the rainforests. Now, a new documentary, We Are Guardians, tells the story of those in Brazil fighting to protect their land from deforestation.
The film, which premiered on Netflix in Latin America, is due to be screened in London on 15 March as part of the Human Rights Watch film festival. It is co-directed by the Indigenous Brazilian activist Edivan Guajajara and the environmental journalists Rob Grobman and Chelsea Greene. Leonardo DiCaprio was an executive producer.
Grobman and Greene met Guajajara in 2020 after they came across Mídia Indígena, the Indigenous news network he co-founded.
A central theme in the film is the story of an illegal logger, Valdir Duarte. Grobman says Duarte was found after a two-day journey during one of the expeditions that inspired the film.
“We went on more than eight missions with the guardians to try to find the loggers,” Grobman says. “There would be times when we could hear them close by, and we would just not be able to find them in the dense jungle, or they would run away. It was like finding a needle in a haystack.
“These loggers are often armed and hiding, and we were nervous to approach them. But when we finally found Valdir and his friend and explained what we were doing and why, they were surprisingly like, ‘Yeah, sure, please film,’” he says.
“In a way, it felt like Valdir was waiting for someone to ask him what was going on in his life – because no one had ever done that before,” Grobman says.
Greene feels it was important for them to set up a direct antagonism, the Indigenous versus the loggers, but then show the complexity of the relationship in these Amazon regions. “The industries have created a situation where illegal logging traps people inside this job,” she says.
“Valdir has no other option in his town – he didn’t get to have an education.”