About the Movie

About the Movie

Aluna is made by and with the Kogi people, a genuine lost civilization hidden on an isolated triangular pyramid mountain in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, nearly five miles high, on the Colombian-Caribbean coast.

About Aluna & Kogi

Without thought, nothing could exist

This is a problem, because we are not just plundering the world, we are dumbing it down, destroying both the physical structure and the thought underpinning existence. The Kogi believe that they live in order to care for the world and keep its natural order functioning, but they recognized some years ago that this task was being made impossible by our mining and deforestation.

Heart of the World

In 1990 they emerged to work with Alan Ereira, making a 90-minute film for BBC1 in which they dramatically warned of our need to change course. Then they withdrew again.

The first film had a stunning global impact, and is now probably the most celebrated film ever made about a tribal people. It was repeated on BBC2 immediately after its first showing, and then in many other countries – some 30 times in the US last year, not bad for a 30-year-old documentary!

Heart of the World helped shape the Rio Conference, it led to the King of Spain visiting the Kogi and to a complete transformation of the Colombian attitude to these people. Today, each new Colombian President has to visit the mountain and seek their blessing.

A journey to save the world

But now the Kogi have summoned Alan Ereira back to say that we did not actually listen to what they said. We are incapable of being changed by being spoken to. They now understand that we learn through our eyes, not our ears. In the face of the approaching apocalypse, they have asked Ereira to make a film with them which will take the audience on a perilous journey into the mysteries of their sacred places to change our understanding of reality.

Julian Lennon

Musician Julian Lennon shares his views about the Kogi Indians of Colombia and the ALUNA film.

The Experts

Mama Shibulata

Mama Shibulata

Mama Shibulata

70-year-old Mama Shibulata like the other Mamas in the film is a traditional man who grew up in an isolated territory. None of the Kogi Mamas in Aluna speaks Spanish. 

Before the three Kogi travelled to London they had no legal identity, hence the film beginning with them having to register as Colombian citizens. Mama Shibulata’s daughter Francisca, is probably the first Kogi woman to have left Colombia since the conquest.

Professor Alex Rogers

Professor Alex Rogers

Professor in Conservation Biology, Fellow of Somerville College Oxford, he is a Commissioner for the International Commission on Land Use, Change and Ecosystems for the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE International).

He is also the Scientific Director of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO).

Professor Alex Rogers
Professor Jonathan Baillie

Professor Jonathan Baillie

Professor Jonathan Baillie
Conservation Programmes Director at the Zoological Society of London, Jonathan is the driving force behind the EDGE of Existence programme and a global authority on the status and trends of threatened species.

Professor Richard Ellis

Professor Richard Ellis

Steele Professor of Astronomy, Caltech he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2011. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Institute of Physics.

Professor Richard Ellis
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