Leonardo DiCaprio-Produced Documentary YANUNI Launches Free on YouTube for Amazon Day
08 Sept 2026
Directed by Richard Ladkani and co-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, YANUNI follows Indigenous leader Juma Xipaia as she confronts illegal mining, political pressure and the personal cost of defending the Amazon Rainforest.
Award-winning documentary YANUNI has launched for free on YouTube to coincide with Amazon Day, opening the film to a global audience at a moment of renewed attention on the future of the world’s largest rainforest.
Directed by Richard Ladkani and co-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, the film follows Indigenous leader Juma Xipaia and her campaign to protect the Amazon. Alongside her husband Hugo Loss, a ranger involved in high-risk operations against illegal gold mining, Juma navigates environmental conflict, political pressure, personal threats and impending motherhood.
The result is a documentary that places environmental destruction alongside the human reality of resistance, showing what it means to defend land, community and culture when the risks are immediate and deeply personal.
Leonardo DiCaprio Backs a Story of Indigenous Resistance
DiCaprio’s involvement gives the film an additional global platform, but YANUNI is firmly centred on Juma Xipaia and the people living on the front line of environmental protection.
The documentary follows Juma not as a distant symbol of activism, but as a political leader, partner and mother whose public role carries very real consequences. Her story also reflects a wider struggle faced by Indigenous communities across the Amazon, where environmental degradation, mining and external commercial pressures continue to threaten land, water and traditional ways of life.
By helping bring the film to a wider audience, DiCaprio’s production involvement connects a major international cultural figure with an issue that depends heavily on whether local voices are heard beyond the region itself.
Environmental Documentary Meets Personal Storytelling
Earthrise, which is supporting the film’s campaign, describes YANUNI as a love story and an environmental thriller as much as a conventional documentary.
That framing is important because the film does not treat the Amazon only as an environmental abstraction. It places the story inside a family and a community, where decisions around conservation have emotional, political and physical consequences.
Hugo Loss’s work against illegal gold mining adds another layer of tension. His operations expose the violence and economic interests behind environmental destruction, while Juma’s leadership shows the political and cultural effort required to protect Indigenous territory.
The documentary therefore moves between the personal and the systemic, showing how environmental crises are experienced by individuals long before they become international policy debates.
The Amazon as a Human and Cultural Story
Public debate around the Amazon often focuses on carbon, biodiversity and climate targets. Those issues are fundamental, but they can also become distant when reduced to statistics.
YANUNI brings the discussion back to people.
Indigenous communities are not simply stakeholders in the Amazon. Their cultures, livelihoods and identities are inseparable from the territories they defend. When those lands are damaged through illegal mining or other extractive activity, the impact is environmental, social and cultural at the same time.
Juma’s story illustrates why protecting the rainforest cannot be separated from protecting the rights and agency of the people who have lived within it for generations.
From Awareness to Action
The campaign around YANUNI is also encouraging viewers to move beyond watching the film.
Earthrise has made a social-media toolkit available for people who want to share the documentary, while audiences can also support Instituto Juma and Juma Xipaia’s work protecting the Amazon Rainforest.
That combination of storytelling and direct support reflects the film’s wider purpose: to turn attention into sustained engagement with the people and organisations doing the work on the ground.
About YANUNI
YANUNI is an award-winning documentary directed by Richard Ladkani and co-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio. The film follows Indigenous leader Juma Xipaia and her husband Hugo Loss as they confront threats to the Amazon Rainforest, including illegal gold mining, while navigating the personal realities of activism, leadership and family.
The documentary is now available to watch for free on YouTube as part of its Amazon Day release campaign.
About Earthrise
Earthrise is a climate-focused creative organisation working across storytelling, campaigns and media. The studio is supporting the launch campaign for YANUNI, including the film’s free YouTube release, social-media toolkit and support for Instituto Juma.
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Sara Srifi
Sara is a Software Engineering and Business student with a passion for astronomy, cultural studies, and human-centered storytelling. She explores the quiet intersections between science, identity, and imagination, reflecting on how space, art, and society shape the way we understand ourselves and the world around us. Her writing draws on curiosity and lived experience to bridge disciplines and spark dialogue across cultures.
