Hostage in the Jungle
Wednesday February 22 at 10 pm ET/PT & Saturday February 25 at 7 pm ET on CBC News Network
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Hostage in the Jungle
Watch the film online. Please note: this film is only available for 30 days past the last broadcast date.
45:33 min 
In her first documentary interview since her release in July 2008, the world's most famous political hostage Ingrid Betancourt takes us back to the nightmare of 2310 days and nights she was held of Colombia. In a truly remarkable interview she relives the stories of escape and betrayal, of love and hate, of terror and extraordinary courage. For years no one knew whether they were even alive - and certainly not what life was like: now there is a balanced dramatic account of those years. And of course the story culminates in one of the most dramatic rescues of modern history. More than 70 hostages are still known to be held by FARC in one of South American's lengthiest civil wars.
Hostage in the Jungle takes the viewer back to the heart of the nightmare - along with her assistant, Clara Rojas and one of the American hostages, Marc Goncalves. For years the outside world merely got brief glimpses of Ingrid and Clara - this film tells the full story of how they fell out after attempting to escape very early on. There is the astonishing story of Ingrid's second escape attempt and the terrible punishment meted out by the FARC afterwards.
Ingrid Betancourt
Ingrid and Clara both tell their versions of how they came to "build up walls of silence" which Ingrid says continues until today, how Ingrid kept on trying to escape, how Clara came to terms with her captors, even ending up having a child in the middle of the jungle. There is the scene when Clara announces that she is pregnant and the reaction of the male hostages, worried that the outside world would think it is them. Then they establish that the father was a FARC guard. The film even has an interview with Martin Sombra, the FARC Camp Commander who ran their lives for over a year - and presided over Clara's labour, the ceasarean and the birth of her child, Emmanuel. Marc recounts how, after the baby was taken away, Clara "would sing to the jungle".
Clara Rojas
The stories are intercut with specially shot footage in the Colombian jungle and an astonishing range of archive - images of the camps the prisoners were in, an interview with a FARC commander boasting of the capture just as the Colombian President is denouncing it on TV. There is also the endless campaign waged by Ingrid's family and others to keep the hostages on the Government's agenda and the endless argument of whether to negotiate with terrorists and kidnappers.
And to cap the film, is the amazing footage of the rescue by 14 unarmed Colombian intelligence officers acting out their part as a humanitarian mission. Astonishingly brave given neither Ingrid or Marc believed for a moment that they were Europeans or Australians! They simply thought FARC was tricking them again. But now "as quickly as I was taken hostage, I was released..." muses Marc...while Ingrid remembers "screaming....screaming six and half years of captivity".
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