Antonio y Piti

Ainu Neno An Ainu

2021

This documentary started as part of a photography project about the indigenous Ainu population in northern Japan, portraying people from tightly knit communities. They feel deeply connected by their culture and tradition. With gorgeous pictures, the directors explore how different generations of Ainu reflect on their identity after centuries of oppression.

The Return

2021 · ★ 7

It’s spring in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Uyantza festival is underway with the community celebrating all that the forest has to offer. Meanwhile, news is breaking around the world that a novel virus is spreading and a state of emergency is declared across the country. As people test positive for COVID-19 in the community, some families decide to leave and head deeper into the jungle. Disconnected from school, friends, the internet, and work, one family learns to reconnect with life in the forest. The children begin to unlearn the national curriculum, and instead are taught Indigenous knowledge that mainstream schools normally pass over. As COVID-19 wreaks havoc around the planet, the family reconnect to their ancestral ways, but as news arrives that Ecuador’s lockdown will end soon, will the family choose to return?

Urban Elder

★ 9

Meet Vern Harper, Urban Elder, who walks the "Red Road" in a fast-paced, urban landscape. The camera follows Vern as he leads a sweat lodge purification ceremony, watches his 11-year-old daughter Cody at a classical ballet rehearsal, conducts a private healing ceremony, participates in a political march of 150,000 people, and counsels Indigenous prisoners at Warkworth Federal Prison.

Inseln im Strom - vergessenes Paradies im Ärmelkanal

2013

No synopsis available.

For Love

2022 · ★ 7.8

In this searing documentary, Indigenous people share heartbreaking stories that reveal the injustices inflicted by the Canadian child welfare system.

Q'eros: The Shape of Survival

1979 · ★ 2

Exploration of the way of life of the Q’eros Indians of Peru, who have lived in the Andes for more than 3,000 years.

Train leaves two towns

2016 · ★ 5

In Ecuador, in a single day, the train passes from the mountainous Andes to the tropical coast. The roads were built between 1861 and 1908 to connect the country. Until this date, the two regions live as separate countries, although the roads connect them in less than a day. The film is an observational work that talks about space and collective memory.

The Road Forward

2017 · ★ 9

The Road Forward is an electrifying musical documentary that connects a pivotal moment in Canada’s civil rights history—the beginnings of Indian Nationalism in the 1930s—with the powerful momentum of First Nations activism today. Interviews and musical sequences describe how a tiny movement, the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, grew to become a successful voice for change across the country. Visually stunning, The Road Forward seamlessly connects past and present through superbly produced story-songs with soaring vocals, blues, rock, and traditional beats.

Reclamation: The Rise at Standing Rock

Nominated for an Emmy® Award in 2021 for best non fiction special. Winner of 35 grand jury awards. Filmed in 2016 at Standing Rock, North Dakota, this powerful documentary follows the Indigenous leaders as they unite the Native Nations for the first time in 150 years in order to rise up in spiritual solidarity against the unlawful Dakota Access Pipeline which threatens their treaty lands, sacred burial sights and clean water. These young Native Leaders honor their destiny by implementing a peaceful movement of resistance which awakens the world.

Motherland Memories

2022

Ompung Putra Boru, a sixties indigenous Batak woman from Humbang Hasundutan, North Sumatra, retraces her life stories through photographs that interweave her past and present as a wife, mother, healer and indigenous land defender in two neighboring villages. Her multi-layered stories are juxtaposed with visual records of everyday life in the two villages, where people’s living space is still increasingly threatened by a giant pulp expansion.

After the Revolution

2010

The impact of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, on the lives of the Mayan women who joined as rebels to seek justice within their own culture.

Woven Songs of the Amazon

2007 · ★ 7

The Shipibo-Konibo people of Peruvian Amazon decorate their pottery, jewelry, textiles, and body art with complex geometric patterns called kené. These patterns also have corresponding songs, called icaros, which are integral to the Shipibo way of life. This documentary explores these unique art forms, and one Shipibo family's efforts to safeguard the tradition.