The world will never know what was going through 26-year-old Christian missionary John Allen Chau’s head when he was shot and killed by arrows off the coast of North Sentinel Island. There are jokes, of course, and educated guesses, but the best most of us can do is search inside ourselves for the answer. That’s the approach “Boys State” directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine take with “The Mission,” using an investigation of Chau’s story as a Rorschach test of audiences’ own biases and beliefs.
Was Chau an evangelical martyr-hero who answered God’s calling and gave his life trying to convert a remote and hostile tribe? Or was he an arrogant and unprepared American, brainwashed by the church into undertaking a suicide mission? Chau can’t answer, and though he left behind detailed diaries and a string of social media posts, the filmmakers were obliged to...
Was Chau an evangelical martyr-hero who answered God’s calling and gave his life trying to convert a remote and hostile tribe? Or was he an arrogant and unprepared American, brainwashed by the church into undertaking a suicide mission? Chau can’t answer, and though he left behind detailed diaries and a string of social media posts, the filmmakers were obliged to...
- 10/13/2023
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
It’s not difficult to scorn John Chau. A 26-year-old evangelical Christian with a taste for outdoor adventure, he undertook a one-man mission in 2018 to North Sentinel Island, an extremely remote and unreached part of India, to bring the gospel of Jesus to the Sentinelese. Even if you don’t know the story, it’s clear from the start of the new National Geographic documentary The Mission that things did not go well. The film is a reminder that, from the non-missionary perspective, and even from a less reckless missionary perspective,...
- 10/12/2023
- by Chris Vognar
- Rollingstone.com
Judging from talk in restaurants and on the Telluride gondola, one of the films provoking the strongest reaction at the festival this year is The Mission. The National Geographic documentary, directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, tells the story of missionary John Chau whose shocking demise in 2018 made headlines around the world (and elicited insensitive memes).
The world premiere and subsequent screenings here have triggered debate over the ethics of Christian missionary work, particularly when it involves attempts to convert Indigenous people who have had little or no previous contact with outsiders, as was the case in Chau’s endeavor. He took it upon himself to try to bring the Gospel to the North Sentinelese, a group living on a remote island in the Andaman Sea. After initially being repelled by a warning shot from an arrow, Chau returned the next day and was felled on the beach. His body was never recovered.
The world premiere and subsequent screenings here have triggered debate over the ethics of Christian missionary work, particularly when it involves attempts to convert Indigenous people who have had little or no previous contact with outsiders, as was the case in Chau’s endeavor. He took it upon himself to try to bring the Gospel to the North Sentinelese, a group living on a remote island in the Andaman Sea. After initially being repelled by a warning shot from an arrow, Chau returned the next day and was felled on the beach. His body was never recovered.
- 9/4/2023
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
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