Original subtitles

In her dreams, Juliane often sees herself on the streets of a city.

Shops, display windows, bargains...

Everything seems normal.

And then, all of a sudden the faces she encounters are broken.

The heads are smashed, disfigured,

but strangely enough she is not afraid.

Pucallpa, a godforsaken place in the Peruvian jungle.

Right next to the airport a monument of plaster has been erected.

A crashing plane is depicted all in plaster.

And from there, a dotted line follows the course of the river.

An inscription explains that this was Juliane's route out of the jungle.

"Alas de esperanza" - Wings of Hope, is inscribed on this monument

which was erected in memory of those who died in the LANSA airline crash.

I see this monument now for the first time in my life, and it touches me strangely.

Considering that I emerged as the sole embodiment of hope

whereas all the others remained without hope in this disaster.

Here, on the side of the monument, a plaque has been mounted

with a highly emotional inscription which reads:

"Brethren, we are united here through our longing to reach the warmth"

"of the sacred hearth of home."

"Christmas, 1971. We were on our way thither..."

"but instead, we were cast into dark eternity."

Back here there is a row of graves in the form of traditional niches.

in which the dead lay buried.

Quite a few names of very young people catch my eye.

Some of them children, others barely twenty years old.

Some of them are even represented by photographs.

Here, a young woman.

Further on, a young man barely eighteen years old.

All in all, over sixty of those stricken by the disaster lay buried here.

On Christmas Eve all higher ranking officers had left the garrison of Pucallpa

and had returned to their families in Lima.

Quite unexpectedly

I found myself burdened with the enormous responsibility of leading the search

for the missing aircraft.

It was a traumatic and heart wrenching experience

when we arrived at the site of the disaster.

We found the widespread fragments of the wreckage

and there we found trees hung with the belongings of the travellers.

Suitcases had opened in mid-air, and the presents hung in the branches

as if these were Christmas trees decorated for a sad holy night.

As if they were adorning for the relatives for all those who never came home.

A somber destiny, I think, had been preordained for this Christmas.

And, the trees stood as a funeral rite for those who had perished.

Lima, Peru.

The airport inaugurated only a few months before the disaster.

The departure hall for domestic flights.

Everyone knows the experience,

checking in at one of the counters, the most normal thing in the world.

This a film that lay dormant in me for many years

because I myself had almost been part of this very catastrophe.

Like anyone else, I was not out for adventure, war, or self-imposed dangers.

Juliane Koepcke, you have asked me to address you by your maiden name

because of your expressed desire to maintain a certain amount of anonymity

in your life at present.

Under your maiden name you have become world famous.

You were 17 years old then.

27 years ago we must have met here, at these very counters.

It was Christmas Eve day, both of us were booked on the same plane.

I was about to start shooting my film 'Aguirre: The Wrath of God'.

The story is about Spanish Conquistadors in the jungle, searching for El Dorado.

Only later would I learn that we were fighting our way through the jungle,

just a few rivers away from Juliane as she,

during these very same days, was fighting for her life.

I remember that we started the day with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, we were glad we had managed to get this flight.

On the other, we were worried and anxious because LANSA had such a bad reputation

after two previous crashes. And yet, we were eager to return quickly to the jungle

so we could celebrate Christmas at the ecological station

my parents had founded deep in the rain forest of Peru.

At the very least, we wanted to spend New Years there with my father.

But, as I had just graduated from high school, I didn't want to miss the prom

which was planned for the 23rd of December,

since this marked the end of a phase of my life.

All around here there was a crash of passengers.

At some point, I must have elbowed you aside.

I managed somehow to put a twenty dollar bill onto the counter

and the agent winked at me and she said: "You are on, you are all on."

Then, at 11 am there was an abrupt announcement

that my flight had been summarily cancelled.

You see, after the crashes LANSA had only one single plane left

which flew Lima, Cusco, into the mountains and back.

And then, a second flight into the jungle followed.

The plane lay over in repair for an ominously long time.

In the end, there was only time for one flight.

And so, only Juliane's would take off on schedule.

I remember the tribulation of that thick throng of passengers.

We 92 are the lucky ones who will make it home for Christmas.

You probably remember that.

Yes, everyone was overjoyed

to be allowed top board and celebrate the holidays with their families.

There was only one question.

Would Juliane be prepared to repeat all the stations of her odyssey with us?

Do you dare? Do you really want this?

Well, what choice do I have

after I have basically consented and come this far already?

I think it is very important to have my husband along to give me moral support.

This time however, we flew Aero Peru.

Row 19 Seat F, the window seat.

The same as 27 years ago.

Well, to be honest, I feel pretty nervous and tense.

To sit in the same seat as 27 years ago,

memories surge up and they are not very pleasant.

Since then, I have lost confidence in pilots and airplanes.

I listen for every noise.

And especially on a flight over mountains because of the frequent turbulence.

At that time the route also led across the Andes.

The eastern slopes begins the Amazon basin.

Here thunderstorms frequently gather.

The first 25 minutes of the flight were calm and normal.

Nothing special. We got our lunch packed

and then it became increasingly cloudy.

The plane flew into dark, dense thunderclouds.

It wouldn't matter much to me.

At the time, I still enjoyed flying but my mother was somewhat anxious

when she saw the stormfront approaching.

My mother sat next to me and I was by the window,

My mother in the middle and in the aisle seat was an obese Peruvian man

who fell asleep right after takeoff

and was oblivious until we got tossed around pretty badly.

We flew straight into the storm

and it was frightening how the clouds streaked by as if they were living creatures.

It was pitch black punctuated by continuous flashes of lightning.

And, never before or since have I ever experienced such turbulence.

Christmas presents fell from the overhead bins.

And then, suddenly I saw a blinding, incredibly white flash of light

on the right wing, just as I am sitting here now.

It looked as if lightning had struck one of the engines.

I can't describe it precisely, but I had this sensation.

At that moment, my mother screamed: "This is the end!"

And exactly what happened after that, I can't say.

Later, fragments of memory returned.

For example, that we were in a nose-dive

and I still hear the deep roar of those engines.

We went almost vertical down and people screamed in horror.

The souvenirs, flower bouquets, large parcels; flew all over the cabin.

And then, all of a sudden, I was outside the plane.

I wa suspended in mid-air, still in my seat.

It was not so much that I had left the plane,

but rather that the plane had left me.

It simply was not there anymore.

I was all alone with my row of seats.

I sailed on through the air and then I tumbled into a fall.

I spiralled, face downwards.

The seatbelt squeezed my stomach and I couldn't breath anymore.

And at this moment, I realized with absolute clarity what had happened to me.

But, I had no time to be afraid because apparently I lost consciousness.

I can still see the jungle beneath me, a deep green, like broccoli.

Jungle as far as the eye can see.

There are no clearings for hundreds of miles, unless made by man.

Here in this area, the fragments of the Lockheed Electra

had rained down over an area of fifteen square kilometers.

The crash site is still vaguely known.

Nevertheless, during preproduction for this film

it took us three unsuccessful expeditions to find it.

With only the fourth reaching the place of the catastrophe.

Sometimes it took us hours to advance a mere 300 feet.

The march through the jungle was so difficult and the distance so vast,

that we decided to clear a small area just large enough for a helicopter to land.

This time, Juliane landed softly.

We brought all our provisions with us, including drinking water,

as it was a dry season.

Our camp was very provisional.

Pieces of the aircraft lay strewn around us in the jungle.

The casual way she dealt with the mosquitos and other vermin

was the first thing that struck us about Juliane.

Here, a coin purse found just outside the camp.

It probably belonged to a little girl.

I'm going to take a look inside.

It contains two coins.

Old ten soles coins, which are no longer in circulation.

Naturally, I have often pondered of how I could have survived

a fall from two miles up and escaped relatively undamaged.

There are three possible explanations.

It is most likely a combination of the three.

Firstly, in very big thunderclouds there are dramatic updrafts

which drive everything upwards, and these could have slowed down my fall.

Secondly, the brief time that I was conscious in mid-air,

I had the feeling that I was spiralling downwards

and that the jungle seemed to be spinning beneath me.

This might have happened because I was strapped to one end of the row of seats,

which created an effect similar to a falling maple seed.

At one end the seed, and then wing, the whole thing spiralling down.

Finally, I was told by one of the men who later reached the crash site

that where my seat was found tall trees were densely intertwined with vines.

This maze, might have broken my fall.

It could be that I crashed into them and my seat spun around.

And, with the seat under me, I fell through this thickage.

And then, relatively softly,

quote-unquote: "struck the ground".

Very close to our camp, Juliana searches the jungle with Juan,

one of our native indian Macheteros.

Here, the paint on the outer shell is still visible, almost like new.

Juliane came face to face with her own fate.

This here had been the very plane in which she had flown.

Her nightmare, a nightmare of each and every one of us,

had become so concrete that it was finally palpable.

Here, even an emergency exit with all the lettering.

And yet, Juliane seemed to be emotionally untouched by all of this.

This shell, she later said, was a necessary protective device,

part of a technique she developed to lead a somewhat normal life.

Here, there are pieces of carpet, the color is still there.

The strands have grown into the ground.

You can barely walk here. The fragments are so densely strewn.

Here is an instrument panel, with a mesh of cables attached.

We have an image of how a sunken Spanish galleon is supposed to look.

The carcass of the hull, bronze canons,

an open coffer with gold coins and pearls.

But, what a plane that has sunk into the jungle looks like,

has not taken shape in our imagination.

We will probably walk right by.

We would recognize it only if we paid close attention.

This must once have been a suitcase; its metal frame.

It's strange that the locks are still locked.

Here, the handle of a spoon.

This is the heel of a lady's shoe.

Here, a hair curler, as was the fashion in those days.

Juan has found a piece of a tray.

Shortly before the plane crashed we were served a sandwich.

Just before I awoke from my deep unconsciousness

I had two strange and involved dreams.

In one, I was flying around like crazy in a dark room.

I kept dashing along the inside of the walls

and I heard a booming, roaring noise in my ears.

As if I, myself, was equipped with an engine.

In the other dream I had the urgent need to wash myself

because I felt completely dirty.

I had the feeling that my entire body was sticky and soaked with mud.

I now really needed to take a bath.

And then, I thought in my dream

"Well, it's so simple, you just get up and walk over to the bathtub."

"It's not far."

And, the very moment I resolved to do this

I woke up and found myself under the row of seats,

completely drenched and covered with mud and earth.

The rain must have poured down all night long.

At this moment, I realized that I had fallen from the sky to the ground.

This a row of three seats.

Down here the bottoms, and here a seat back.

Roughly like this, I must have lain under the seats after the crash.

A whole afternoon and the following night, until the next morning.

When I came to, I realized pretty quickly what must have happened to me.

I had crashed down in the middle of the jungle, and the plane was gone.

I tried to get up and could barely manage because my concussion

must have been very severe.

But I realized, at this very moment, that I was all alone.

My mother had disappeared, even though I had come down with three seats.

And, the obese man who had fallen asleep on the aisle seat, was also gone.

And at this moment, I felt completely helpless and godforsaken.

Totally abandoned. At first I could hardly see at all.

My left eye was swollen shut,

and with the other I could only see through a narrow slit.

I had lost my glasses.

I had only one shoe, a sandal, and a thin, skimpy miniskirt

as was fashionable at the time.

I struggled to my knees, and then it got so black in front of my eyes

that I had to lie down again.

The concussion must have been very severe.

After a while, I managed to sit up.

And then, I discovered the injuries I had suffered.

My right clavicle was fractured, and the pieces overlapped.

But, they didn't stick out through my skin. It didn't hurt at all.

What astonished me, was that here on my calf

I had a long cut, about this long and an inch deep.

This wound really astonished me because it didn't bleed at all.

It looked like a canyon, jagged at the edges, as if ripped by a piece of metal.

It went deep, and it didn't bleed at all.

Well, I saw that nobody was around.

And I thought: "Where is my mother? I must find my mother."

As soon as I could get up somewhat, crawling on all fours,

I started to search for her. I crawled around and I called out for her.

My mother and I had always been very close.

This is why it was inconceivable to me,

and I can barely describe it in words,

this feeling that when a person who so obviously forms an intimate part of your life

is so abruptly, from one second to the next, snatched away from you.

I think that anyone who has lost a loved one

with such abruptness knows what I feel.

Juliane was happy with her parents.

As a young biologist her father desperately wanted to do research in the jungle.

Shortly after the war, poor and without a passport.

he dug himself into a cargo of salt on a freighter

and reached South America as a stowaway.

He then crossed the entire continent on foot until he reached Peru.

This is where Juliane grew up.

No doubt, she must have inherited some of her father's dogged will power.

Juliane lived in a simple hut.

From early on she took care of her own tucan and other animals that she loved.

She attended the German high school in Lima,

but only in the jungle did she feel really at home.

She would soon move about like a native indian.

Juliane returns home.

A neighbor from the jungle station awaits her at Rio Pachitea.

His proud name is Carlos Aquilez Vasquez Mordina,

but everyone just calls him El Moro, The Moor.

The boat trip on the Pachitea is brief,

then reach the mouth of the small tributary Yuyu Pichis.

Yuyu Pichis is a word in a native tongue meaning: "the river that lies".

The river that just pretends to be the larger tributary Pichis, further upstream.

Everything seemed to be as always

while reminiscences returned to Juliane,

and yet everything was different.

It started with a newly constructed road through the jungle,

The Amazon Marginal Highway.

Hour after hour, there was nothing but deforestation,

dead trees and smouldering fires.

In those days, to get to our ecological station

you had to walk through the densest virgin rainforest.

Nobody lived here, but now all this has been transformed into pasture land.

All the way to the horizon and miles beyond.

Only the area of our ecological station remains relatively untouched.

It's back there, where you see that tall tree with a fanning crown, a Lupuna tree.

It's wood is very valuable and for years we have been trying to protect this area.

In the area of this station, which encompasses just over a square mile,

there are over 500 species of trees,

and at leats as many other species of plants.

So far, 400 species of ants have been found here,

as well as over 350 species of birds,

52 species of bats, which I myself have studied here,

and close to 80 other species of mammals.

Roughly 50 species of frogs, and at least the same number of reptiles.

Of the insects, the butterflies are particularly well-researched.

There are 280 species of butterflies,

not including the nocturnal ones, which must number much more than that.

Erich, Juliane's husband, is like her a biologist.

He is an expert on wasps.

Juliane has specialized in the habitat of bats.

Here in the hollow of this giant tree

she observed bats for her doctrine thesis for more than a year.

I see there are still bats inside this tree, a small group.

I can see them fluttering around.

There is one hanging down. It looks in amazement at me,

that I have penetrated its habitat.

These are not bats, or course, but a species of cricket.

The dangers of the jungle are basically misjudged.

I am standing here, in Yuyu Pichis, in the middle of the water as you can see.

There are stingrays, crocodiles, piranhas

and other fish that would love to have a bite of your leg.

And yet, nothing is happening to me.

The prianhas are found her sparsely

and in moving water they are absolutely harmless.

Here I have learned how important it is to find water if you are lost in the jungle.

A small creek leads to a larger one, which eventually takes you to a river,

where you can find human habitation and help.

When parents were still here at the ecological station

an incident occurred which served as a precedent for me.

An American team made an expedition into the Sierra mountains

about 30 miles further upstream, and there an accident occurred.

The leader of the expedition shot himself in the leg.

He was a tall man, over seven feet and quite heavy.

So, they sent a young student to get help.

The young man soon became hopelessly lost in the jungle,

but then did exactly the right thing.

He luckily came upon a small spring and followed the water

and in this way reached Yuyu Pichis, this river here,

and two days later arrived, wading through the water at our station.

Right at this spot where I am standing.

Back at the site of the crash...

we almost overlook the largest piece of the plane

which had become engrafted in the landscape.

Here, filling the frame from left to right.

For the first time, Juliane appeared deeply affected by the site of this.

Only now did the catastrophe and her solitude acquire real dimension.

The most extensive search in the history of Peruvian aviation turned up nothing.

Even helicopters could detect no trace.

The jungle had mysteriously swallowed the plane and its 92 passengers.

When I looked up into the canopy of trees, I saw that there were no broken branches.

The jungle was completely untouched.

There was no sign of a path of impact.

I was all alone with my row of seats.

Not until four days later,

did I find another row of seats with three dead bodies.

It was the only contact I ever had with anyone from this plane.

It was a horrible experience.

The seats were stuck in the ground, they were literally drilled three feet deep.

They must have hit like a bullet.

Three women had been sitting there. They must have been killed instantly.

They were driven into the soil head first.

Only their feet stuck out.

At first, I was agast when I saw this.

I didn't know what to do, but I wanted to know if my mother was one of them,

even though it should have been obvious to me that she couldn't be

as she had been sitting next to me.

I approached the bodies slowly. I didn't dare.

I took a branch because I didn't want to touch them.

And, I turned one of the feet over and saw that the toenails were painted.

And, it then became clear to me that this could not possibly be my mother,

because she never painted her toenails.

The only things I found at the crash site were a bag of candy

which I later took with me, and a Christmas cake, about this size,

as is typical here in Peru.

It was completely soaked and full of mud.

I tried to eat some but it tasted so bad, that I left it behind.

That was obviously stupid.

I should have taken it along, but at that moment

I didn't realize I would be in the jungle so long.

While I was searching there, all of a sudden a sound materialized.

It penetrated my consciousness.

It had been there the whole time, but somehow I hadn't noticed it.

It seeped slowly into my consciousness. It became louder and louder

and finally filled my entire head.

It was the soft dripping, the trickling of water.

I followed the sound and I discovered a tiny, little spring

where water ran over a stone and dripped into a small puddle.

At this very moment I knew, with absolute clarity,

that I had to follow this water to get out of this jungle.

Anyone else would probably have stayed at the site of the crash and waited for help.

But for me, it was clear that this was futile.

And, I followed this runnel because I knew that a small body of water

flows into a larger one, and that I would eventually find help.

The course of water Juliane is following

is without doubt the same one she followed then.

Eventually, she reached this creek.

Not having the slightest idea where she was,

and uncertain whether she would ever make it out alive,

she never had any moments of mortal fear.

Her concussion was simply too severe to allow for any thoughts other than

advance, keep going,

no matter what might lurk under the fettered surface of this water.

Juliane, when I hacked my through here sometime ago with five macheteros

I discovered this.

According to what you had told me

it was obvious that this must have been the propeller blade

and engine you came across back then.

However, you must have come from this direction

because the water flows this way.

Yes, that must have been the engine which I found on the third day.

Following the course of water, it was on the righthand side.

It was smeared all over with black oil and crushed like this.

Are you aware that after the crash in Cusco, the previous crash,

it was discovered that the mechanics who maintained these engines had

up till then only repaired motorcycles.

And, apparently the pilots hadn't any appropriate licenses.

And the worst was that in Cusco, 101 bodies were retreived from the wreckage.

There was single survivor, the co-pilot, who had suffered severe burns.

But, the capacity for the plane was 92,

which means that they jammed an additional ten passengers on board.

Their reputation was really the worst imaginable.

Well, I only flew this line because it was the cheapest, I had to save money.

You were lucky that nothing happened to you.

-Their reputation couldn't have been worse. -Yes, I knew that.

Juliane has her safeguards against the horror.

She has frequent dreams about shelves, cases and racks.

Where millions of butterflies are stored away

all existing species of this world.

"It is," she says, "as if I could safely lock away all the airplanes in the world"

"...so that they could not hurt me anymore."

But then, the dream turns into a nightmare.

Suddenly, there are no more living beings,

no animals, only trophies.

They are stored away in large halls,

old warehouses are filled with them,

and the trophies are for sale.

And then, animal skins of every species

with only a few remaining frozen in poses from a distant past.

They will never move again...

They will never stir.

They are caught in the abyss of time.

This on of my saviors, so to speak.

They are crested chickens, very primordial birds,

with a peculiar and awkward behavior.

They live in groups by larger rivers.

They produce a snorting sound, highly atypical of birds.

When you approcah them they get extremely agitated.

They keep flapping their wings and seem to bow to each other.

It looks quite hysterical.

The young ones live in slovenly built nests, in branches overhanging the rivers.

Quite often they fall into the water, but they have claws on their wings

like the primordial bird, the archaeopteryx.

And, with great agility they climb back up

through the branches into the nests.

They are also good swimmers. They are pretty indestructable.

This is one of my saviors.

There! There are some crested chickens.

You recognize them by their beautiful crests.

It is a relatively large bird...

which has a peculiar...

Oh, that was just a woodpecker. For a moment I thought I had heard one.

It's a large bird which has an atypical, but in the jungle, very distinctive call.

Some sort of wheezing snort or snarl.

I don't remember it precisely, somewhat like this:

Something like that. I can't really imitate it well.

But, three days after the crash I suddenly heard these calls.

And I thought: "This is my salvation!"

Because wherever those birds are, there must be a larger body of water.

I immediately changed direction

and headed straight for those calls, because I hoped I might find people.

The mud is quite deep here.

Exactly at this point I reached the R�o Shebonya.

You can rcognize this spot by the amount of giant cane.

There is no other place along this river where the cana brava grows so densely.

And, Juliane immediately recognized that this river was not navigable,

that she would not encounter people here.

Initially on R�o Shebonya, I saw and heard planes circling above me.

After a few days, this ceased altogether.

And, I realized that the search had been called off.

I was aware that I was now all on my own

and that I could no longer expect any outside help.

This is why my feeling of solitude and abandonment grew deeper.

All Juliane had was a single sandal and no tools of any kind.

If she had only had a machete and a lighter,

her survival would have been much easier.

She could have built a simple shelter.

She could have taken out the soft core,

the heart of a certain type of palm, and eaten it.

She could have cut through a certain type of liana and found pure, fresh water.

She could have cooked the easily found shiwawaku nut.

You can also roast them in hot ashes.

These nuts have a very high nutritional value.

I felt no hunger at all. During the entire time I ate nothing.

I felt no need to. However, I did drink a lot of water.

The only thing that really alarmed me was this wound that I had on my arm.

The flesh flies had laid their eggs there.

Maggots had hatched and they had eaten themselves deep into my flesh.

They had burrowed a deep hole.

When I turned my arm like this, I could look inside.

They were half an inch long.

The hole was this large

and I saw this maggot swiggling around, that's when I got frightened.

I thought I might develop blood poisoning and eventually lose my arm.

That really worried me.

The wound was completely inflamed.

Two days ago this horse was injured on a barbed-wire fence.

Now the wound is full of maggots.

Exactly the same kind of maggots I had up here in my arm.

Most of the time I swam down (???), waded or simply let myself drift.

I saw crocodiles everywhere, mostly in groups of two or three.

Whenever I approached them, they would hurl themselves from the riverbanks,

diving into the water straight at me, directly at me.

Normally, anyone would flee in panic into the jungle.

But, I would have perished for certain there.

I simply stayed in the water because I knew from the ecological station

that crocodiles do not represent a danger.

These came and flee at the sight of men, and always hide in the water.

It was very strange because I would get extremely close to the camen,

and then, from either side

they would splash wildly into the water and dive right under me.

In shallow water, I always carried a stick and poked the river bottom ahead of me

because there are a lot of poisonous stingrays in the muddy shallows of the river.

Stingrays are the really dangerous animals of the jungle, of these rivers.

Much more dangerous than the poisonous snakes, jaguars,

and tarantulas which people generally fear.

The extraordinarily bad film about Juliane Kopcke

thus teems with crocodiles and other creatures eager to bite.

The sensationalism of the alleged dangers of the jungle

and the abysmally bad leading actress annoy Juliane.

The girl that plays my part stumbles through the jungle with the look of a hunted doe.

And everywhere, behind each bush or tree, lurks some danger.

She looks around and (gasp) she sees a tarantula crossing her path.

There, all of a sudden! A snake dangles from a tree and brushes her face and...

She sees a jaguar! She like pounces from a bush and kills a mother monkey

who happens to be nearby with her baby.

The terrified young one leaps onto the girl's lap

and they cower together and find consolation in one another.

The baby monkey stays with the girl during the night.

The next day the girl has to move on,

but the little monkey doesn't want to leave its home, and they separate.

And, the girl cries out to the baby: "Don't leave me alone! Don't go!"

How did you spend your nights?

While it was still light I searched for a place

where I had some protection for my back.

A small slope or a thick tree trunk.

And, I collected some large leaves I could cover myself with.

During rainless nights the mosquitos were particularly bad.

They almost ate me alive, as I wore only a tiny, and by now torn miniskirt.

And when it rained, there were no mosquitos,

but the rain was ice cold like stinging needles.

And sometimes, it rained all night long.

When that happened, the leaves were no help,

and I sat shivering and sleepless until morning.

Here, below us, R�o Shebonya.

It seems to consist only of meandering bends.

You can imagine how great a distance Juliane had to travel in vain.

But for ten days, she stuck to her route.

Has she only known that R�o Sungaro lay in the opposite direction

she would have been saved within two or three days,

as this river is navigable for boats all year round.

Barley an hour passes without a raft or a boat going by.

Along the riverbank there are quite a few huts.

But, running off blindly in any given direction could have led Juliane

to the deepest expands of jungle.

Juliane did the right thing, even though day after day she got closer to death.

As the days passed, my apathy grew deeper and deeper.

Sometimes, I let myself just drift in the river and I had no thoughts anymore.

I must have lapsed into some sort of trance.

Then, on the tenth day, I settled down on a sandbank, towards evening.

I had by now grown very weak. I looked around.

I didn't see anything in particular and half-dosed off.

But, there was something that I should have seen,

only I didn't see it in my semi-conscious state.

Suddenly, I must have come to, and I saw a boat right in front of me.

I thought: "This can't be real. Have I gone crazy?"

"Is this a hallucination?"

I slowly approached it and touched the boat, and it was real.

At this moment I became wide awake, looked around.

Where are the owners? There was no one there.

I discovered a small path at the river bank. One I hadn't noticed before either.

There was steps carved up there. The embankment was but nine feet high.

I tried to negotiate it,

but I had grown so weak that even by crawling on all fours

I couldn't manage to overcome this little slope.

It probably took hours, but I finally made it.

And up there was a small, fetched hut,

where an outboard engine laid wrapped in a plastic tarp.

There I settled down and found shelter for the night.

Juliane and Moro are trying to catch a special species of frog,

a so-called poison arrow frog.

The native indians used its poison for their arrows.

In this hut, I was completely apathetic. Although I felt no hunger

I knew I had to eat something, otherwise I would die within a very short time.

All around me were this species of poison arrow frog.

And I still wanted to eat them.

My mind was in a fog. I tried everything to catch one of these animals.

It was like mockery. One sat this close to my face, but I was already too weak.

Normally, eating one wouldn't kill you,

but in my weakened state it could have been fatal.

Puerto Inca, a village at Rio Pachitea.

The man who is assisted by relatives up the embankment of the river

is Marcio Ribera.

He is a lumber man and he worked in the area of R�o Shebonya.

He was the one who found Juliane.

As he was well aquainted with the region,

we sent him out before the shooting of the film

to locate the crash site.

He set out alone and this almost cost him his life.

This was a month ago.

A poisonous stingray had stung him and Marcio lay near death

on a sandbank for three days.

Then a boat happened to pass by

and as he had no money on him, they refused to take him along.

He finally traded his shotgun for the fare.

Juliane found the rifle and bought it back.

She wanted to surprise her savior with it.

Don Marcio, what a joy to see you again.

Marcio Ribera was one of three native indian lumbermen who found Juliane.

The other two have since died.

Something bad has happened to you.

The stingray stung me, there are quite a few of them out there.

For a whole month I was very, very ill.

How deep the puncture is. This must have really hurt a lot.

Marcio demonstrates with a leaf how he stepped onto the ray.

Naturally, he wore his rubber boots for protection.

The ray struck with the sting-armored tip of its tail, and hit Marcio's heel.

It went straight through his boot.

Marcio shows the hole.

I thank you, Senora, for coming to pay me a visit

after so many years.

It's been so long since I've seen you.

I would be dead if you hadn't saved me then.

I was very weak, and lay half-conscious in this hut.

And suddenly, I heard voices approaching from the jungle.

At first, I couldn't believe it.

And then, I had a feeling of boundless relief.

He was the first person I saw.

And it was as if an angel had come unto me.

The three men cleaned her wounds with gasoline

and drove out some of the maggots.

Then they took off in their boat.

Eleven hours later they reached the Pachitea and the first village.

As a result of her fall, Juliane's eyes were still so bloodshot

that people whom she met on route fled in panic

because they thought that they had seen a forest demon.

From a small airstrip she was flown out to Pulcallpa, to a missionary hospital.

Months later, released from hospital,

Juliane is in an airplane again.

As in a tunnel view, forwards and backwards in time, she sees herself...

left behind in the jungle at the site of the crash.

All around her there is no one,

only the voices of the forest.

Further and further she moves away from herself.

Further than thoughts can reach...

an ocean of jungle extends around her.

She wants to continue her search.

She wants to find all the fragments of the plane

and lift them for the ground and resurrect them.

She wants to reassemble the whole thing.

But, it dawns on her that nothing can be reversed,

that nothing can be annulled.

Did she sit behind on of these windows?

Was she perhaps hurled into the void through this exit?

Juliane sees herself again during her flight into the void.

Alone, strapped to her seat, she sails on further and further.

Around her there is nothing but a yawning abyss.

She flies on for weeks.

Then, it becomes dark.

As it becomes bright again, she sees a way out, a door of deliverance.

She walks through the door...

and all of a sudden she beholds an angel engulfed in light.

All fear departs from her.

All screaming falls silent.

She does not breath anymore.

Overwhelmed by bliss, her heart stands still for an entire minute.

Then she knows that a boat will come, slowly and softly,

to carry her away,

to rescue her at last.