I.
INTRODUCTION
“You might as well try to stop an avalanche as to stop a moving frontier.”- Meriwether Lewis -
Mato Grosso is a psychological frontier epic — a sweeping, character-driven story set in the heart of the Amazon. It follows JOHN CAIN CARTER, a former Army Special Operations soldier turned rancher, and KIKA GARCIA-CID, his fiercely capable Brazilian wife, as they risk everything to build a life on the edge of the known world. What begins as a love story becomes a battle for the soul — the sould of a man, a marriage and a vanishing landscape.
This is a story about choosing what’s worth fighting for. For John, the journey is one of penance. Haunted by his past and hardened by war, he carries the quiet belief that he owes a debt to God — one that can only be repaid through suffering, sacrifice and an unflinching resistance to injustice in a world ruled by appearances and false morality. He seeks redemption in the fire, but it nearly consumes him.
It is Kika, and her unwavering belief in the goodness of his heart, that saves him. When he teeters on the edge of violence and hate, it is her love that holds the line. And in the end, it is not vengeance, but family, that calls him home. Through her, and through the dying words of his older brother, John finds the forgiveness he so desperately needed and the peace he had spent a lifetime chasing.
MATO GROSSO is a film about love, sacrifice, disillusionment and the quiet strength it takes to stay human when everything around you tells you not to.
II.
THE STORY
Years later, in Texas, John meets Kika Garcia-Cid, the daughter of Brazilian rancher. Their love grows quickly, but when Kika’s father challenges John to see the world she came from, he realizes that if he’s going to truly understand her — and himself — he has to follow that call. That path leads him deep into the Amazon.
In Brazil, John discovers a frontier as wild and mythic as anything in the American West. At FAZENDA ESPERANÇA, the remote ranch they begin to build together, he finds a purpose — not just in land and labor, but in love. But paradise is short-lived. Corruption, greed and land theft swirl around them like smoke. John pleads for help from the government, the international environmental community and NGOs, but his calls go unanswered. He realizes the so-called protectors of the forest depend on the problem so that they can sell the solution. They don’t just need the chaos. They thrive on it.
As their home and community come under threat, John is pulled toward violence. Trained for war, he prepares to return to it — to kill those destroying the land. But Kika’s love, quiet and unwavering, becomes the line he cannot cross. In the jungle, at the edge of his soul, he comes face to face with evil and turns back — not because he is weak, but because he remembers who he is.
John and Kika choose a different fight, one rooted in stewardship, integrity and truth. They begin training Indigenous firefighters, rallying neighboring ranchers, and challenging the corrupt system with real solutions. But doing the right thing only makes them more dangerous to the powers that be. An embargo is placed. Neighbors begin to take their own lives. John’s family is targeted. His marriage cracks under the pressure. When his plane is sabotaged, he is stranded in the jungle for three days — alone, reflecting, unraveling.
He returns to Texas broken, only to find his brother, Will, dying of cancer. John confesses his guilt — for the war, for the land, for all he’s lost. But in his brother’s final words, he finds the absolution he’s long sought: you didn’t fail — you stayed human.
Will is buried under the same oak trees where John and Kika were married. And it is there, at that grave, that John finally sees clearly: the land was never the real fight. Love is. Family is. Kika is.
He returns to Brazil not to conquer it, but to belong to it — and to them.
III.
THE WORLD
Mato Grosso begins in the deserts of Iraq, where John Cain Carter, a Long-Range Surveillance Army Ranger, is dropped behind enemy lines during the Gulf War. Beneath a sky darkened by oilfield fires, he sees firsthand how far-removed greed can scorch a land it doesn’t even understand. One night, in a shallow foxhole, he dreams of a jungle — vast and untouched — and watches it burst into flames. He doesn’t know where it is or what it means. Not yet.
Years later, John finds that place in the heart of Brazil, in the deep interior of Mato Grosso. He comes not as a soldier, but as a husband, a rancher, a man trying to build something good with his wife Kika. But once again, he finds fire waiting for him — not just in the forests, but in the corruption, lawlessness, and invisible hands that fuel it.
The fires in Brazil are not the same as those he witnessed in Iraq, but they burn for the same reasons: greed, power, and systems that profit from chaos. Corporations, criminals, and even elements of the global environmental movement exploit the region — not to solve its problems, but to sustain them, because the crisis is their business model. The real predators disguise themselves as corporate interests and environmentalists, justifying their actions through a false morality.
This world is one of contradictions: breathtaking beauty and unspeakable violence. A place where ancient wisdom survives beside modern brutality. Where jaguars still roam, but the battle for the land — and for the soul — is far more human. It’s not just a setting — it’s the film’s central pressure: a land that asks who you’re willing to become to protect what you love.
©John Carter
Apocalypse Now
©American Zoetrope
©John Carter
©Tito West
©Tito West
©Tito West
IV.
A MODERN DAY FRONTIER
Mato Grosso is a Feature Film set in the an epic story of love, sacrifice, and redemption set against the striking backdrops of the Gulf War, the vast Amazon rainforest and the brush country of south Texas.Mauris leo erat, placerat quis semper eu, pulvinar in est. Nam eget justo quis ligula faucibus pretium ac nec mi. Aliquam lacus est, auctor sed arcu at, luctus condimentum lectus. Quisque vitae eleifend quam, vel suscipit nisl. Duis efficitur est nunc, eget efficitur felis porttitor in. Donec facilisis ultrices mattis. Quisque blandit ac enim non accumsan. Donec euismod magna turpis, ut blandit purus tempor sit amet. Suspendisse et hendrerit mi. Integer gravida, sapien quis ullamcorper auctor, metus eros aliquet ante, ut dictum ipsum tortor eget elit. Maecenas eu rutrum dui, ut faucibus lectus. Vivamus porttitor bibendum tortor.Logline: In the heart of the Amazon, a Texas rancher and his Brazilian wife struggle to carve a life from the wilderness, turning their ranch into a beacon of hope amidst a landscape ravaged by greed, corruption and environmental destruction—where the battle for survival is as much about saving the land as it is about preserving their humanity.
Themes: Mato Grosso explores themes of love, sacrifice, redemption and the blurred lines between good and evil. John’s journey reflects the struggle to preserve one’s soul amidst chaos and the transformative power of family and love.
©Claudia Andujar
From the book Mato Grosso - The Last Virgin Land by Anthony Smith and Michael Joseph
©Claudia Andujar
V.
TONE & STYLE
The tone of Mato Grosso is operatic, intimate, and hallucinatory — a cross between the haunting disorientation of Apocalypse Now and the poetic realism of All the Pretty Horses. It carries the quiet tension of a world unraveling, one decision at a time.
This is a story told through image, silence, and atmosphere. Dialogue is pared down to only what must be said. Much of the emotion lives between the lines — in glances, in breath, in the weight of a still frame. The jungle hums. The sky burns. And in the quiet, the stakes rise.
Visually, the film leans into long dissolves and slow transitions — cross-dissolves that blur time and place, suggesting memory, dream, and inevitability. These are not stylistic flourishes, but emotional cues. This is cinema where what we feel comes not from what’s said, but from what we see.
Mato Grosso moves between grounded realism and mythic surrealism — between the external world and the inner shift of a man waking up to what he must protect.