Muddy, hot and wet – every second is a challenge for documentary filmmaker Nicos Argillet. Driven by a passion to share beautiful stories in undiscovered worlds, Nicos accepted a difficult mission – to get into French Guiana where it is covered by nearly 90% of the Amazon rainforest – to uncover the story behind the notorious treasure, gold.

“Garimpeiros” – what they call themselves – are the ones that look for gold, or the bad guys in a story. Every day, Garimpeiros recklessly chop, dig and dismantle, turning a lush primal forest into a land of devastation, spilling mercury and arsenic in the rivers. Blood is inevitable when there are fights against the French military.

Nicos followed five Garimpeiros who left Brazil and chose to gamble their entire lives on a few grams of gold. However, it could be freedom they have never had. Right or wrong becomes ambiguous after understanding the desperation of these Garimpeiros, who refuse to accept their destiny and die poorly.

As a documentary filmmaker, the goal during production is to collect as much footage as possible. But in conditions as unpredictable as in the Amazon rainforest, the choice to continue shooting or not must be made wisely. This dilemma haunted Nicos multiple times in the extremely harsh environment, where filmmakers have very little control in what situations they are going to face. “You can spend two days hiking in the forest only to find that everything has changed, or have to hide from the military for an entire week not knowing when you’ll be able to have access to fresh food or water.”

As Nicos puts it, “The most difficult part is to keep your focus and your sanity.”

In this “Amazonian underworld”, nobody wants to lug around heavy camera gear, especially with humidity over 85% all the time. “You’re gonna walk a lot, and carry heavy things. You’re gonna be wet, muddy, and crossing many rivers. And everything you have with you must be absolutely necessary and reliable,” said Nicos. “So, we only brought the simplest yet most functional equipment.”

What can be worse than carrying expensive gear in the hot, wet and dangerous jungle? Gear issue — every small failure can be fatal in the middle of nowhere. “A broken hammock or a dead head lamp can make your life hell. Humidity rate is above 85% all the time. Rain falls from the sky everyday like a river flowing from above. Dirt and mud will find their ways inside every little crack you can think of and the heat will make the fans go crazy. The last thing you want is your camera to break down, or worse – your cards fail on you and destroy irreplaceable moments that you struggled so much to film!”

“We have now been using Wise cards since 2017 in every continent on this planet. They have never failed us, in whatever climates or temperatures they were in. Not a single file or a single transfer had been damaged. That is for me an impressive feature that makes them my go-to choice, whether it’s CFast, SD or now CFexpress. For the kind of documentary that I am making, it’s not always possible to do backups, or to carry a laptop on an external hard drive. Because Wise cards have from the beginning been the one with the most capacity, I have been fortunate enough to be able to shoot for days, if not weeks, without needing to offload.”

“With all the energy that I put into making my films across the globe I know that Wise has my back. And that’s the best feeling I know.”

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