The adventurous decision to make a film following the path of acclaimed Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad’s 1937 expedition to Mexico in search of a lost Apache tribe gradually morphs into an examination of what is fact and what is fiction, and finally a timely reflection on concerns over cultural appropriation.
Eight years ago, Danish screenwriter Lars K. Andersen (who scripted the 2008 drama Flame & Citron amongst other films) had an idea for a film inspired by Helge Ingstad, his childhood hero. His plan was to follow in Ingstad’s footsteps and find the mysterious lost tribe, together with Norwegian filmmaker Håvard Bustnes.
But their well-intentioned plans turn sour when Ingstad doesn’t quite turn out to be the heroic figure from his books. The story of the lost Apache tribe proves complex to unearth, and the pair are rightfully forced to question and deconstruct the notion of the white adventurer.
The film opens in suitably epic style as screenwriter Andersen (sporting a jacket and coat) climbs to the top of a desert sand dune. Asked what he can see, he replies it’s the Northern part of the state of Chihuahua – old Apache land, the part of the range where the Apache used to hide in Northern Mexico. In voiceover he then tells how he was fascinated by old Western films, even those with clichéd Native Americans, all set alongside archival footage of his hero Ingstad talking about his trip.
“I walked into a world that was not mine,” says Andersen. “I tried to tell a story that was not mine to tell. But I’m a writer…somehow that is the curse of the writer. Didn’t Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad know that when he wrote his Apache book?” This is cut alongside more archival footage of Ingstad talking about the Apache history and how “they fought with incredible skill and energy.”
In the old footage the explorer explains how he lived with them for half a year. “I got to know an old Apache who was about 65/70 years old who talked about Geronimo and that not all of his people were captured – some wild Apaches still live in the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico.”
On their trip to the US, Anderson and the film crew are bemused to find out that few folk have heard of Helge Ingstad, and no one seems to want to talk about the lost tribe. In fact, things get worse when he hears that those who did know of Ingstad were told he went looking for a wagon of gold bars, and not the tribe.
But when they are joined by Pius, great-grandson of Apache warrior Geronimo, who himself is a firm believer in the presence of the Apaches in Mexico, Anderson feels they are on the right track. Along their journey, they encounter the Holguin sisters, a Mexican family who Pius believes are capitalising on Geronimo’s name; and academic Amanda Fayant, a Cree-Metis-Saulteaux with a degree in Indigenous Studies who doesn’t agree with their making the film, saying “our stories are our knowledge and who we are.” Furthermore he has a tetchy email/phone communication with Mexican anthropologist/Intelligence Agent Dr. Jose Medina Gonzalez Davigla who claims to have found the lost tribe – and has proved it officially, he says, via field research – and that they want to be left alone.
Eventually returning to Denmark after they argue (and after one has a heart-attack) Andersen and Bustnes start to wonder about their film. Especially when the Danish Film Institute opts not to help finance the project.
When Andersen visits Ingstad’s daughter Benedicte and grandson Eirik at the family’s remote home he receives even darker news, including Benedicte’s admission that her father “stretched the truth a bit too far,” while Eirik admits his grandfather told him he drew up a contract detailing how to split the gold he was searching for. Up in the family attic Eirik reveals a trunk with Helge Ingstad’s belongings…which includes a skull with a bullet-hole.
There is a niggling sense that the film is over-structured. One assumes that concerns about cultural appropriation would have been considered at an early stage, and the fact that the Danish Film Institute decides not to help fund the film – when it was titled Apache – surely reinforces this aspect. Late in the film director Håvard Bustnes starts to feature more prominently as he and Andersen debate the direction the film should take, but in the end the film hits the right emotional notes as Andersen decides how to handle the discovery of the damaged skull. As he notes at the conclusion: “A story is never innocent …a story always comes with a price.”
Norway-Finland-US-Mexico, 2024, 100mins
Dir: Håvard Bustnes
Production: UpNorth Film, NRK, YLE
International sales: DR Sales
Producers: Håvard Bustnes, Christian Aune Falch
Cinematnography: Lars Skree
Scr: Lars K Andersen
Editors: Jussi Sandhu, Anders Teigen
Music: Pekko Kappi, Tommi Laine
