Patrick McCollum has filled his 75 years of life with a colorful assortment of occupations: jewelry designer for UK royalty, kung fu instructor, carnival barker, prison chaplain (to famous serial killers, no less!), and–most famously–international peacemaker. Gabe Polsky’s enlightening but not uncritical new documentary about McCollum, “The Man Who Saves The World?” opens at Cinema Village in Manhattan October 24. Go here for showtimes, ticket information and a list of participants (including McCollum and Polsky) doing Q&A’s after the first three 7 p.m. screenings.

Last month a brief profile about Patrick McCollum appeared in the New Yorker. After hearing the sad news that his friend Jane Goodall has died McCollum visited “The National Museum of the American Indian” in Manhattan. He talked to a Guyanese museum guard and gave him his business card which reads “Creating peace on a universal scale through promoting a meta-narrative, which establishes that everyone and everything is sacred and essential.”

Polsky is fascinated by McCollum’s astonishingly rich life but he’s still somewhat skeptical of his latest challenge: indigenous elders of the Amazon have identified him as the man chosen to fulfill an ancient prophecy to unite all of the Amazonian tribes so they can work together to stop the destruction of the world’s largest rain forest. He has trouble getting the elders to confirm Patrick’s claim; Patrick complains that Gabe is scaring them by questioning in a patronizing, white person manner. Meanwhile, the seriousness of his mission is contrasted with comic touches. After a tour of the ramshackle house Patrick is constructing in the southwestern U.S. Polsky asks, “It’s all up to code, right?” To which McCollum  responds, “It’s on a higher level of code!” (Curiously, the producers of the film include several comedy film and TV directors: Peter Farrelly, Danny McBride, David Gordon Green and Jody Hill. My guess is that they are friends of Polsky.)

McCollum’s work is mostly self-funded; he says he spends all of his monthly $1200 social security payments on it and is already $6000 in debt. Patrick is refreshingly candid, recalling events in his life like the time his brother’s body was sliced almost in half by a plate-glass window; he had to hold him together while his mom drove them to the hospital. Jane Goodall calls him “One of the most interesting persons I have ever met.” Polsky’s film is an unforgettable portrait of an unassuming renaissance man who is doing remarkable work to save the planet. Let’s hope he succeeds.