Screening times:
Friday, November 17, 6:30 PM - Half-capacity screening
Saturday, November 18, 6:30 PM - Half-capacity screening
Jesse Moss, Amanda McBaine | Documentary | USA, India | 2023 | 103m | English, Latin, Piraha, Hindi, Sarikoli, Onge with English subtitles
In 2018, a shocking event made headlines around the world: a young American missionary, John Chau, was killed while attempting to contact one of the world's most isolated Indigenous peoples on remote North Sentinel Island. Through exclusive interviews and with unprecedented access to Chau's secret plans, personal diaries, and video archives, The Mission examines the mythology of exploration that inspired him, the evangelical community that supported his quest, and reveals his own father's heartbreak as Chau's youthful thirst for adventure became a fatal obsession.
From the Directors’ Statement:
John Chau had planned his mission for 10 years and defied an Indian government prohibition against travel to the island. In a letter to a small group of supporters he described himself as the spear tip, a metaphorical description that seemed to conjure his own violent death but also a hint that he was not a lone wolf. Who helped him?
And then there were the Sentinelese. One of the last uncontacted communities on the planet is now somehow drawn into the frenzy of the internet age. Who were they? Did John truly believe he could convert them? The few existing images of them sourced from a 1974 issue of National Geographic rendered them as spear-wielding warriors. How had this small community somehow escaped the tide of history,colonialism, modernity and destruction that had swallowed so many other Indigenous groups?
As we came to see, this was a story about the collision of two worlds, of two vastly different cultures, of great historical forces. It is a story about faith and the ethics of our shrinking world and, ultimately, a story about stories and the profound ways they shape us.
"There's something wonderfully Herzogian about The Mission, a philosophical quest in which wild ambition goes hand in hand with folly at the very limits of so-called civilization." -Peter Debruge, Variety
"Filmmakers Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss adopt a gentle, wise tone as they tell Chau's story." -Matt Zoller Seitz, rogerebert.com
"This expertly tuned film is simply pro-introspection: a heavy-hearted look at an unnecessary death and a cultural superiority long deserving of scrutiny." -Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times
Tickets $8.75 ($8 cash at the door if available).
Half capacity
Half capacity
