The Territory (2022)

This was shortlisted for the Academy Award this year and it tells a story that is hard to tell cinematically. The movie opens with a speech by Jair Bosonaro pledging to take indigenous land and essentially nationalize it. His administration undermined the government agency tasked with protecting those rights, issued regulations that are harmful to Indigenous people, and halted the recognition of their traditional lands. The government has also weakened the federal environmental protection agencies, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA, its Portuguese acronym) and the Institute for the Conservation of Biodiversity (ICMBio), leaving Indigenous territories even more vulnerable to encroachment. The movie has a hard time telling a compelling story but it is always dedicated to it its main advocacy for the Amazon rainforest’s Indigenous Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau people. For three years, director Alex Pritz and a small crew filmed the struggles by the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau people to keep their Indigenous land. There are fewer than 200 of them left, but they have great pride in their culture and the land of their ancestors. The protection of their land is essential for more than their own livelihood and rights, but also the world—the Amazon rainforest holds a great deal of importance as the “lungs” of the world. To watch this land then be destroyed gradually by invaders who are wielding chainsaws and setting fire to large swaths of land is harrowing in its own right, and then their feelings of entitlement to do so is appalling. The package is not neatly tied up or succinctly told, but it is none-the-less compelling.