American director Alex Pritz delves into the declining heart of the Amazon basin in the documentary “The Territory”, which portrays the dangers an indigenous ethnic group must face to protect their heritage at a crucial time for the world’s largest rainforest.
The former cinematographer and now director follows members of the Uru-eu-wau-wau ethnic group as they try to prevent farmers and land grabbers from seizing their ancestral lands in the state of Rondônia.
Ethnicities “are doing this to defend themselves and their home,” Pritz told Reuters in an interview Wednesday.
“But it is also very important for the rest of us outside of Brazil to recognize that they are doing it for us too and that their work is helping to save all of us from the worst effects of our own emissions on this warming planet.”
Illegal logging and illegal mining in the Brazilian Amazon increased under President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), who pushed to allow more mining and commercial activities in the region to reduce poverty by cutting environmental supervision and funding from the National Foundation for Development. (Funai).
In making his first feature-length documentary, Pritz also spent time with farmers who dream of securing their own patch of land.
“They see themselves as these virtuous pioneers who go out and turn nature into private property,” he said.
Attacks on indigenous peoples and invasions of their lands by illegal miners and loggers, particularly in the Amazon, increased dramatically in 2021, exacerbating an already “terrifying” situation, the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) said last month. of the Catholic Church.
Environmental activists are also on the firing line.
In June, British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenist Bruno Pereira were murdered on a research trip to a remote part of the Amazon overrun by illegal fishermen, loggers and prospectors.
Source: Terra
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