Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Lost Children’ on Netflix, An Evocative Doc About The Search For Four Kids Lost In The Colombian Amazon  

In The Lost Children (Netflix), a documentary directed by Orlando von Einsiedel with co-direction from Lali Houghton and Jorge Durán, we revisit the 2023 search for survivors after a small prop plane crashed in a largely uncharted portion of Colombia’s vast Amazon rainforest. The combined search-and-rescue effort inspired a new level of cooperation between the Colombian military and the country’s indigenous communities, became national and then international news, and eventually achieved what at first had seemed impossible. “The family asked me, how long will you keep searching? I told them, ‘Until we find all of them…’”        

THE LOST CHILDREN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: “An aircraft that was flying the Araracuara-San José del Guaviare route has gone missing…” As news reports crackled across Colombian airwaves in May 2023, army choppers full of special forces troops headed over the jungle toward the plane’s last known position. Aboard had been the pilot, an Araracuara official, and Magdalena Mucutuy Valencia, a local woman traveling with her four children: daughters Lesly, 13, Soleiny, 9, and 11-month-old Cristin, and Tien Noriel, her four-year-old son. Not only was the area where the plane went down inhospitable and teeming with wildlife. It was also a known haven for armed groups like government dissidents and drug traffickers. Rescue was going to be difficult.

The Lost Children combines a bit of reenactment with repurposed footage shot during the search effort by journalists, the Colombian military, and local indigenous communities. But from the moment the search begins, the doc also immerses the viewer in the beautiful, dangerous mystery of the Amazon rainforest. Creepy-crawlies everywhere, and otherworldly colonies of churning, chittering insects. Snakes, big cats, and other eyes in the forest, always watching through incessant sheets of rain. At times, the visuals of Lost Children even suggest a nature documentary. But the stakes of the search are never far from anyone’s mind. When the plane’s wreckage was located on Day 15, there were only three adult bodies inside.

Separate interviews with army personnel and indigenous men who formed their own search team highlight the traditional unease the people of Colombia have felt with their government and its military. While the troops set up computerized search grids and use helicopter-based loudspeakers to try and contact the kids, the locals turn to their informed knowledge of the landscape. And through Day 18, Day 29, and Day 34, the search continues to be unfruitful, though with more acknowledgement from the army guys and the locals that they’re in this effort for the greater good. 

With clues like half-eaten jungle fruit, used diapers, and shreds of clothing found, the search eventually narrows to a more manageable chunk of the rainforest. A Huitoto shaman prepares ayahuasca psychedelics, so that he might commune with the jungle itself in order to locate the children. And when rescue efforts are at their most bleak, a breakthrough occurs in the most humble way possible. From somewhere deep in the rainforest, the cry of a baby is heard.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The Trapped 13 (Netflix) is one of numerous documentary films to explore the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue in Thailand. (The streamer also tells the story dramatically, as a limited series.) And Lost Children director Orlando von Einsiedel also helmed the COVID-19 reflection Convergence: Courage in a Crisis and the Academy Award-winning doc The White Helmets, about Syrian Civil War relief workers.     

Performance Worth Watching: Nicolás Ordóñez, who joined the indigenous search team, also found a sense of community in their efforts. “In a way, I was rescued, with the love and respect of my entire indigenous culture, the deep and lasting identity of a thousand-year-old Indigenous community. And I am proud of all the children, and our entire culture.” 

Memorable Dialogue: After the children had been missing in the jungle for nearly a month, even the special forces commander leading the military’s part of the search began to marvel at the rainforest’s untold mysteries. “I felt like there was a superior, evil force preventing our most advanced search-and-rescue efforts to find those four kids.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: “We chose to think like children, and children never stay still. We moved through the jungle like we were children ourselves, never in one precise direction.” As The Lost Children documents the search effort, it’s always conscious of the philosophical differences between people born and raised in indigenous communities, where the jungle is respected, feared, and utilized in equal measure, and the army, which applies an invasive, top-down search structure. On the ground, it didn’t matter who or what group actually found the children. Every bit of participation meant more of a chance for a positive outcome. But as Lost Children highlights, the search effort itself became a microcosm of Colombia as a country, where friction between what’s new and old, between forces of control and local people and traditions, has been in play for generations.   

While The Lost Children does end on a note of hope – people put aside their differences, so that innocent lives could be saved – it is also never far away from the idea that we’re all infinitesimal specks of dust. It suggests that in the larger scheme of our world, it’s actually foolish to assume that the propellers and thin aluminum skin of an airplane would offer any real protection from the reaching maw of the rainforest, a thriving natural system larger than any dispute between humans, or even the collective worth of our very lives. For the rescuers, it was imperative to remember that somewhere in the jungle, four children were struggling to survive however possible. But it was equally important to maintain a healthy respect for an environment that has always made its own rules.

Our Call: Stream It. The Lost Children is a compelling documentary about the dedicated search for four kids gone missing in a harsh, dangerous environment. But it’s also a commentary on the culture of Colombia, and a kind of tribute to continued danger and mystery of the Amazon rainforest.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.

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