los últimos (w&d sebastián peña escobar)

Los Ultimos is a discursive documentary based around the work of a couple of mardy botanists who are doing what they can to preserve the Paraguayan forests, which, as one might imagine, are being culled, like every other great forest in the world. Much of the film is predicated on the viewer’s relationship with the two men at the heart of the film: Ulf, a German national living in Paraguay, and Jota, a Paraguayan expert on birdlife. They are a craggy, cranky team. Ulf, in particular, has perhaps a predictable take on late capitalism and the conspiracies which surround it. If you don’t engage with this pair, the movie loses much of its bite, and there is a meandering element to the documentary, which in part captures the scale of the forest, but in part might be said to work against the urgency of the film’s message.