The Dead and the Others

Co-directed by Joao Salaviza and Renee Nader Messora, this film was shot among the Kraho people of Brazil and every performer is a member of the community. Ihjac, a young man, is the one expected to become a shaman after his father's death. To escape that duty he goes to the city. The film is not a documentary, and it does not fully use the fictional mould either. The directors lived in the community for a long period and the script was built collaboratively. Rituals are not reconstructed; they are filmed as they occur and the camera offers no explanation. The city section is the harshest part. There Ihjac learns what Indigenous identity means in hospital queues and official procedures. The difference between a village where the dead and the living share one world and the bureaucratic emptiness of the city is the film's real argument. It won a prize in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. Who it's for: those who like cinema made in collaboration with Indigenous communities and slow narrative. Who it's not for: viewers expecting an explanatory anthropological film; nothing here is translated for the audience.