Tuesday night, NeueHouse Madison Square hosted a special screening of National Geographic’s latest documentary feature, The Mission.
The film tells the story of American missionary John Chau’s attempt to make contact with the indigenous people of North Sentinel Island in 2018. Released earlier this fall, the documentary has already garnered early Oscars buzz, being praised for its unconventional style of storytelling. The Sentinelese, who live off the coast of India, are one of the only voluntarily isolated societies left on earth. Because of this, much of the circumstances surrounding Chau’s death are undocumented, which left directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine little to work with in the way of raw footage and traditional documentary interviews. The filmmakers instead, cleverly leaned on digital animation and a narration of the diary Chau kept before his death, ultimately focusing less on the failed attempt itself, and more on painting a portrait of John Chau, and how his romanticized knack for adventure and reckless entitlement intersect with American missionary work and modern colonialism.
The evening, set in NeueHouse’s private theater, featured a Q + A with director Jesse Moss, and producer Will Cohen, moderated by legendary documentary filmmaker, Whitney Dow. Moss spoke about his general interest in exploring men who are in conflict with themselves and the world and how “…John was particularly vexing because he seemed to be a person with very little doubt.” The film contextualizes Chau’s sense of entitlement in a long history of Western imperialism, honing in on the role art and mass media plays in instilling a sense of empowerment in our youth to move freely through the world under the guise of ‘adventuring.’
The Mission screened at NeueHouse’s private theater on December 5th.
Moss talked at length about the sense of responsibility the team felt in conveying this, especially as the film was produced by National Geographic, a significant purveyor of those narratives, who are “currently reckoning with that history,” as he put it. “They knew they owned a piece of this story…providing the fuel, the ammunition, the ideology to John [Chau] to do this, to believe that he could go and become a part of this indigenous community…We had to approach the story with a certain amount of humility and self awareness but at the same time to not let that awareness swallow the film.” According to Moss, National Geographic welcomed this self-critique.
Guests discussing the film at the post-screening reception.
The Mission is currently in select theaters and can be streamed on National Geographic’s website.
