Synopsis
As the son of a banker from The Hague, he had grown up in luxury and his future seemed all mapped out, but then Rudolf Truffino went hiking in the Venezuelan rainforest shortly after WWII. There, an Indian tribe saved him from death by exhaustion near the highest waterfall in the world, Angel Falls. Jungle Rudy, as his nickname soon became, proceeded to build the exotic holiday camp Ucaima, not far from Angel Falls, for the wealthy people of the world. Prince Charles of Great Britain, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, and Empress Farah Diba of Iran have all stayed there. It's also where Rudy met the Austrian tourist Gerti, with whom he had three daughters. He died in 1994, alone in his hammock.
Rob Smits started a search for the man behind the yellowed newspaper headlines. Nowadays, Ucaima is run by Gaby, Rudy's second daughter. Smits was allowed liberal access to boxes full of home movies, cassette tapes and letters that Gaby had carefully saved. The result is a psychological portrait of a restless man who tore up his Dutch roots and replanted them in the Venezuelan jungle. He left Gerti to lead the life of a playboy in Caracas, but wept bitter tears when she died, even though the display of emotions was taboo in his family. Though Rudy would have liked his daughters to marry jet-setters, they all fell in love with simple locals.