In the struggle to understand what a human being is -- and what hierarchy we can claim among ourselves, if any -- maybe we are ready to watch films about "original" or at least indigenous people. Such films have been around a long time, for instance, "Nanook of the North" though it was criticized for infantilizing the people with stunts like them pretending to eat 78 speed phonograph records.
In a more recent year I once showed "The Fast Runner," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanarjuat:_The_Fast_Runner "(Inuktitut: ᐊᑕᓈᕐᔪᐊᑦ) is a 2001 Canadian epic film directed by Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk and produced by his company Isuma Igloolik Productions. It was the first feature film ever to be written, directed and acted entirely in the Inuktitut language." Note the Inuktitut alphabet so the language can be written. It was Native American Days in Browning and the high school kids meant well, but they were soon bored and snuck away. Some of this was only possible because of newly invented technology.
Videos are my social life these days so I go back and forth among Netflix, Acorn, and PBS Passport though I resent having to pay for a tax-supported source. Especially when it Disneyfies to death beloved old classics. At least I can get at "Grantchester," "Endeavor," "Lewis" and other Masterpiece Theatre classics. But these are not the kind of films I'm talking about.
On Acorn I look for the Aussie movies and dearly loved "Mystery Road" because it is a Western with more fabulous landscapes than even the American SouthWest and cinematography that rises to appreciate it.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7298596/ All the indigenous people are "aborigines", some assimilated to modern family and law enforcement woes and some still in the old ways. The two lead actors, Judy Davis (so white she once played Elizabeth I) and Aaron Pederson, a classic cowboy/cop with indigenous genetics. An American
audience can easily get into this story, but there's a lot to think about. It's not "Walkabout" or "The Rabbit Fence" and not meant to be, but if you know those films, they shimmer in the background.
Now and then I get exasperated with Netflix trash and leave for a while but then I discover that they have a few of what they call "hidden gems" and sometimes fork them over if one stumbles onto a trigger.
Most recently I found "Green Frontier". https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9641192/ This a very new film (2019) and a murder mystery technically, but it is also meant to awaken us about the Amazon jungle and streams, not as hostile and impenetrable, but as the Mother place. The story, the crew, the actor, everything was from Columbia. When I could catch bits of dialogue, they were Spanish, but I don't know whether indigenous languages were included. The plot didn't make a fuss about it. Subtitles were English and seemed to reflect what was really said, though there were some gaps.
The plot is very simple: a tough disciplined female officer comes to investigate the murders of nuns. Then the rest of the plot unspools until at the end we find out the answers to everything, including the woman, who turns out to have been born in this obscure undeveloped place. It's not so much that the plot is remarkable, but the categories of people who are involved, all with the population of Columbia and without drug wars. Included are the "Uncontacted," the people who puncture low-flying small planes with many arrows.
As is traditional with tales of the South American world, there is magic but it is not illogical but it carries a lot of weight. The symbol of the "heart" (corazon) is strong and vivid. The foliage is more important than animals -- the "walking tree", the death flower (quite female!), and water everywhere. I watched uncritically, just letting it all unfold, and that was very satisfactory.
Peter Mattheissen tried to do something like this film, but he was outside. In fact, "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" offended Tom Berenger, the protagonist, so much that he sponsored an even more Westernized film to show what was "right." Film, of course, is the art form that pulls us in on the most emotional basis and often crashes into core beliefs that one doesn't even know they are there until the arrows hit them.
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