The Reel Review
On May Day of 2023, four indigenous children from the Mucutuy family, ranging in age from 13 years to just 11 months, survived a plane crash in a remote stretch of the Colombian Amazon that killed the three adults onboard, including their mother. Incredibly, rescuers found the four children, emaciated and nearly starved to death, after 40 days in the jungle. This Netflix documentary is about their incredible rescue.
Unfortunately, The Lost Children is real missed opportunity. This could have been an incredibly inspiring story about how an injured Lesly, with her fishing prowess and knowledge of Amazonian plants, kept younger siblings Tien, Soleiny and Cristin alive on a diet of raw fish, seeds, fruits, roots and flour that the plane had been transporting, and how they hid in tree trunks to protect themselves against predators. But the documentary only briefly touches on that, instead focusing its attention on the rescuers and how the Colombian Army and indigenous people, who had been wary of one another, worked together to find the children. The documentary incorporates actual footage of the rescue mission as well as reenactments, the latter of which are frankly jarring.
The children’s story is incredible. If only they been given a documentary fitting of such an amazing tale of survival.
REEL FACTS
• As of the summer of 2024, the four children were still under government care, awaiting a case worker decision on whether to award custody of the children to their material grandparents or Manuel Ranoque, the father of the two youngest children, Tien and Cristin.
• Manuel Ranoque is currently in jail awaiting trial on charges that he sexually assaulted one of the four children prior to the crash. He denies the charge.
• After their rescue, Lesly said their badly-injured mother had survived for several days after the crash, telling Lesly just before she died to take her siblings and save themselves.
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