Movie Review: The Lost Children

Title: The Lost Children
Director: Jorge Duran, Lali Houghton, and Orlando Von Einsiedel
Starring: Vanessa F. Garcia, Dan Garza, and Henry Guerrero
Publisher: Netflix
Genre: Non-Fiction, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars (6 Stars on IMDB)
Reviewed by Astilbe

Four Indigenous children are stranded in the Colombian Amazon after their plane crashes. Guided by ancestral knowledge, they’re able to survive while awaiting rescue amid the jungle’s challenges.

Cooperation is the key to survival.

Lesly, Soleiny, Tien, and Cristin Mucutuy were four young siblings who were the only survivors of a plane crash in Columbia in 2023. This documentary explores how they stayed alive in the Amazon rainforest and what the Colombian government as well as members of the indigenous community in that country did to try to find them in the 40 days after the crash. I was intrigued by how large and organized the rescue efforts were and how many people participated in the search. Yes, there were adults who were actively searching the jungle to discover what happened to these children, but there were far more folks working behind the scenes to narrow down places these kids might have gone, leaving messages for them, and so much more.

I did find myself wishing that more screen time had been spent describing the children’s experiences themselves. As admirable as the search efforts were, I thought that the much more important story here was how a wounded thirteen-year-old girl was able to keep her nine-year-old brother, four-year-old sister, and infant sister alive in an environment that could easily kill a healthy, able-bodied adult in a much shorter time frame. Her courage and resourcefulness were incredible, and I would have loved to have so many more details about how she fed and protected her siblings during these days if they could be shared without disturbing this family’s privacy.

It was interesting to see how indigenous and modern modes of searching were blended together in this rescue mission. This wasn’t something I was aware of when I first heard of this case, and I thought the filmmakers did a good job of respectfully exploring the religious beliefs of the indigenous searchers and showing how that aspect of their lives contributed to the cause. Nuance is always a nice thing to find in a documentary!

“The Lost Children” was thought provoking.