Yanuni - An Intimate Portrayal of Activism in the Amazon with filmmaker Richard Ladkani

Yanuni has over 13 million views since it was released a few weeks ago - we talk with Richard about his storytelling approach, and why his team decided to release the film on YouTube.

Richard on location filming for “Yanuni”.

Richard Ladkani is the director of Yanuni, a feature length documentary about Juma Xipaia, an indigenous leader and activist from the Brazilian Amazon. The film was recently released on YouTube, where it has already accumulated over 13 million views. The film was used to help get out the vote in Brazil’s recent election, in which voters rejected right-wing extremist Flavio Bolsonaro.

Richard and I have known each other since 2017, when we started working together on Sea of Shadows, our feature doc about the plight of the vaquita, the world’s most endangered marine mammal. It was a pleasure to catch up with him and hear these stories about how he brought his latest film, Yanuni, to life.

I was curious not just about Richard’s filmmaking process, but also about his approach to distribution. The documentary film industry has changed a lot since we released Sea of Shadows in 2019. Mainstream distribution companies and streaming services have largely lost interest in environmental and social issue documentaries, making the path to get these kinds of films in front of viewers a lot more challenging.

Lots of filmmakers are looking to YouTube these days to reach audiences with their films, and Richard’s YouTube release of Yanuni is a particularly interesting case study. In our conversation, Richard lays out his team’s approach to distribution, explaining how they were able to leverage their YouTube release as an advocacy tool. The recent election in Brazil was of particular importance to the future of the Amazon and its Indigenous people, and Richard and his team were able to use clips from Yanuni as a part of a broader campaign to get out the vote.

Part of the reason that I’m so interested in YouTube as a distribution tool for environmental documentaries, is because I recently co-founded a new YouTube channel called Wild Commons. Wild Commons is a filmmaker-run distribution channel for wildlife and nature films - you’ll find over a dozen award-winning wildlife documentaries on the channel. All of these films are completely free to stream, and we’ve got lots more scheduled for release in the coming months. Check it out, and help us out by clicking that “subscribe” button.

We’ve also posted a video version of this interview with Richard Ladkani on Wild Commons. I conducted this interview alongside by Wild Commons co-founder, Kika Tuff, from Impact Media Labs.

-Matt Podolsky

Still from the film “Yanuni”, featuring Juma Xipaia.