Moment of Contact (film)
'Moment of Contact is a 2022 documentary film directed by James Fox investigating the 1996 Varginha UFO incident, in which multiple witnesses reported encountering anomalous beings in Varginha, Minas Gerais, Brazil, following an alleged crash retrieval operation in January 1996. The film is widely credited with bringing the Varginha case to mainstream international attention and is cited by researchers as one of the most evidentiarily significant documentaries in the genre.
Production
Fox began investigating the Varginha case after receiving anonymous intelligence tips via encrypted ProtonMail from a contact who directed him to specific flight records and military assets associated with the alleged recovery operation. He spent over twelve years conducting field investigation in Varginha with his Brazilian colleague Marco Leal, interviewing witnesses including military personnel, fire brigade members, hospital staff, and civilian eyewitnesses — none of whom approached Fox; every witness had to be individually tracked down.
Stanton Friedman, the nuclear physicist and veteran UFO researcher who had met original Varginha witnesses in 1996, urged Fox not to dismiss the case, calling it potentially "the Roswell of Brazil."
During production, Fox flew a drone over the Varginha Farm crash site; a geologist who later viewed the documentary contacted Fox to report that the ground showed geological anomalies consistent with high-energy compression.
A key witness secured during filming was Marco Feres, a radar military control officer who came forward for the first time to describe a US Air Force aircraft landing at Campinas without Brazilian government authorization in January 1996. Feres testified that two helicopters flew from Campinas to Varginha and back, loaded cargo onto the waiting aircraft, which then departed for the United States.
Roger Leir, the surgeon known for studying alleged alien implants, repeatedly contacted Fox during the production period, requesting to be interviewed about his own Varginha fieldwork, which included documented meetings with hospital physicians at Humanitas hospital. Leir was battling cancer at the time and had not disclosed his condition to Fox; he died before being filmed. He left behind audio recordings and a book transcribing his interviews with Brazilian witnesses, including physicians who claimed to have had a telepathic interaction with the captive entity at Humanitas hospital.
Release
Moment of Contact was released at the end of 2022, available on Amazon and Apple TV.
Before the film's completion, Luis Elizondo contacted Fox requesting a rough cut, stating that he could not explain the urgency but that significant figures were already watching the investigation. The documentary's release preceded by months the first congressional hearing under oath on crash retrieval programs in 2023, at which David Grusch testified that the US government possessed comprehensive proof of non-human intelligence.
Michael Shermer, the skeptic author, contacted Fox after the documentary's release to research an article for the New York Post. Shermer was subsequently arranged to view video footage described in the film and described it in vivid detail in the resulting article.
Follow-up
As of late 2025, Fox was in production on a follow-up documentary featuring new first-person testimony from the lead neurosurgeon at Humanitas hospital — described as the first known instance of a witness providing direct public testimony of communication with a captive non-human entity — who had maintained silence for approximately 30 years. The follow-up also incorporated new audio from surgeons and insiders who had direct contact with the beings, as well as ongoing forensic pathologist testimony about Marco Chereze's autopsy reports.
Members of the US Congress briefed on crash retrieval programs showed awareness of the Varginha case specifically when it was raised, indicating that the documentary had penetrated institutional circles beyond the general public.