Pia Marais's "Transamazonia": safe and sound

Having passed through the last Locarno festival, Transamazonia constitutes an improbable patchwork of international co-productions, Directed by South African Pia Marais, set in Brazil and starring German Helena Zengel (seen in The Legend of Ochi ). Inspired by the fate of the survivor of a plane crash over the Amazon rainforest – a true story already told by Werner Herzog in Wings of Hope – the film begins with a beautiful sequence in the form of a promise: immersed in the rustling of the jungle, the camera gradually discovers Rebecca, survivor of the catastrophe that occurred off-screen a few minutes earlier. Revealed by the rays of light filtering through the canopy, covered by branches and insects, she seems less to have fallen from the sky than to have emerged from the earth, like a mystical apparition emanating from the surrounding nature.

First disappointment as the plot gets underway: the enigmatic figure of Rebecca is quickly supplanted by a character with more prosaic interests, namely Lawrence, a Christian missionary and the young woman's father. She works alongside him as