When I started watching Netflix's new documentary called The Lost Children, I thought I could tell what it'd be like from the synopsis... however I was proven wrong in a really pleasant surprise.
Released on Thursday, November 14, The Lost Children is a feature-length documentary about a plane crash in 2023 which saw four Indigenous children lost in the Colombian Amazon rainforest. If you watch documentaries or other videos on Netflix, you probably know how this goes: we see what it was like for them during the crash, how they survived the initial time in the jungle, how they overcame their fear to thrive in their new situation and how, eventually, they were rescued.
However that's not what The Lost Children is about at all, and the actual story it tells is refreshingly novel — I found myself learning a lot more about Colombian politics and culture than I expected (from a baseline of "not much").
Instead of focusing on the lost children, themselves, the documentary is mostly about the efforts of rescuers to find the children, and their quest was a lot more storied than I'd imagined.
Most interesting to me were the tensions between the Colombian army and Indigenous searchers, both of whom were hunting for the children. As we learn in the documentary, decades of conflict have sown discord between these peoples, and they're initially reticent to work together.
So when they find themselves relying on each other in their quest, it creates some particularly heartwarming moments when skepticism has to be put away in order to complete their mission. The documentary lingers on one particular photo of a camouflage-clad soldier and a civilian hugging after hearing the news of the rescue that summarizes this, and a moment when the largely-successful group of Indigenous trackers falls ill and requires the army's support, has some really memorable videos too.
Sure, rescuing missing kids is heartwarming too, but I think most viewers like me will be expecting this ending and so will be steeled against it. So seeing people put away past conflict for the greater good will come as a tender surprise!
What guides this version of the narrative is lots of footage that was shot by various participants during the hunt; obviously, the missing children weren't running around with video cameras, so we mostly see the adults' perspective. Seeing the body-cam footage of soldiers as they explore the jungle or the videos that explorers shot on their own personal devices lends the story a lot of urgency that you often miss from interview subjects. That's doubly true given that, as the doc points out, the jungles are inhabited by FARC guerilla fighters who are enemies of the army.
The Lost Children was directed by Orlando von Einsiedel, who won an Oscar for The White Helmets about humanitarians in Syria (that movie is also on Netflix). He also directed Virunga, about rangers and conservationists in the Congo protecting a national park from poachers and armed militias, From Devil's Breath about Portuguese wildfires and many more similar stories about dramatic narratives. So The Lost Children is just the latest in an impressive filmography for the director.
If you're looking for something to watch on Netflix, The Lost Children is a great and heartwarming watch, and it joins the likes of Mountain Queen and Yintah as one of the best movies you can watch on the streamer right now.
