A collaboration between Greenpeace, AlchemyVR and The Feelies, Munduruku: The Fight to Defend the Heart of the Amazon is a multi-sensory virtual reality film about the Munduruku people of the Amazon River Basin. The film was made to raise awareness of the threats faced by the Munduruku, whose ancestral land was under attack from large-scale infrastructure projects such as hydroelectric dam building. Had the project gone ahead it would likely bring industrial-scale farming and logging into their territory.

The Feelies commissioned us to introduce additional immersive sensory technology that would allow the audience to physically feel the environment depicted in the film, such as the heat from a cooking fire or the wind as the participants moved through the jungle. Our workshop designed and built driver systems for each of the five tour-able pods that incorporated both heat and wind effects, and using data captured from the Tapajós River basin then re-created the conditions in real-time.

Munduruku: The Fight to Defend the Heart of the Amazon has been displayed at the Centro Cultural Correios, Sao Paulo, at Glastonbury Festival, and won the Alternate Realities Award at Sheffield Doc Fest 2017, and Best Social Impact VR at Raindance Film Festival 2017. Since the release of the film, the official demarcation of the Munduruku people’s territory took place in September 2024, marking a historic and symbolic victory for the community.