Wayumi: A Journey Home
- David Good
- 13 hours ago
- 3 min read
By David Good
As we prepare to premiere Wayumi at the DOC NYC Film Festival this November 15th, I’ve been reflecting on how far this story has come and how much further I hope it will go. This next phase is about sharing our journey with the world and bringing the film to audiences everywhere, especially our friends and loved ones in Venezuela, where so much of the story takes place.
The origins of Wayumi go back decades. After my mother had separated from my father and the Good family around 1992, there was a long silence. Then, in 2011, I made the decision to reunite with my mother and rediscover my Indigenous heritage, my roots as a Yanomami person and member of the Irokaiteri community.
That journey led me back to the Upper Orinoco, deep in the Venezuelan Amazon. Over the next decade, I made several return trips to visit my family, reconnect with the land, and gain a deeper understanding of myself. On one of those trips, my mother asked me to take her back to the United States one last time so she could reunite with my siblings and my father. She spoke about how much she missed them, recalling happy memories of eating pizza and french fries, laughing together, and the life she had once shared there.
Over the years, I have had opportunities to collaborate with major production companies to tell this story. But I always hesitated. The history of my family, and by extension, the Yanomami, is delicate, complex, and deeply personal. I couldn’t bring myself to give up editorial control or risk having the story told through a lens that didn’t feel authentic or respectful.
Then, I met Andrew Balcoff through a friend of a friend. We hopped on a call, and within minutes, I knew this was different. Andrew immediately understood the vision for Wayumi: what it represented, why it mattered, and how it needed to be told. That conversation marked the beginning of not just a professional collaboration but a friendship rooted in mutual respect and shared purpose.
Together, we founded Shabono Media and began filming Wayumi with the little resources we had. It wasn’t a traditional documentary production. There was no big budget or formal roadmap. Things were happening in real time. I was simultaneously conducting microbiome research in the region (a story for another blog post), so much of the film evolved organically from that moment in my life. I packed GoPros, DSLR cameras, voice recorders, and lav mics. I relied on support from friends and colleagues in Venezuela, filming what I could, often without knowing what the next day would bring.
What emerged from that process was an intimate family portrait that reveals not only my mother’s journey and our reconnection but also a different truth about the Yanomami people. I wanted the world to see the Yanomami not as distant subjects of anthropology or victims of crisis, but as real and complex human beings.
Yes, there are immense threats: illegal gold mining, deforestation, climate change, and disease. These are real and urgent. However, when the Yanomami are portrayed solely through the lens of suffering, as you do in the news and headlines, it diminishes their humanity. Wayumi offers another perspective grounded in family, emotion, and a sense of belonging.
Through our story, I hope viewers come to see that the similarities far outweigh the differences. Whether in a remote village in the Amazon or a city in the U.S., the love between a mother and son, the search for identity, and the desire to reconnect with family are universal.
As Wayumi begins its journey into the world, I’m excited to see how different audiences across cultures and continents respond to it. I believe each screening will spark new insights and reflections, and that’s what I love most about storytelling: it continues to evolve.
So, I invite you to watch the trailer, read the press release from IndieWire, and join us for the world premiere at DOC NYC on November 15th. If you’re in the U.S., you can also stream the film online.
Thank you for reading, for following this journey, and for helping us share Wayumi with the world.
Until next time,
David Good
Â
Support the Yanomami Foundation