Coffee: Songs of Smoke

In the town of San Miguel Tzinacapan, in Puebla’s Nahua Mountain Range, a family lost its father. His absence transforms the lives of those who were so deeply connected to him. Tere, now in charge of the family, must make money by selling crafts. Jorge is about to finish school and will soon have to choose his own path. Chayo, 16, must make an important decision. A year has passed, and the members of the family have been able to redefine themselves, finding their own destiny while always venerating their father’s memory.

Xondaros - Guarani Resistance

The 6 Guarani villages of Jaraguá, in São Paulo, fight for land rights, for human rights and for the preservation of nature. They suffer from the proximity to the city, which brings lack of resources, pollution of rivers and springs, racism, police violence, fires, lack of infrastructure and sanitation, among others. Unable to live like their ancestors, their millenary culture is lost as it merges with the urban culture.

Uma: A Water Crisis in Bolivia

Andean communities fight to protect their water from contamination by mining companies.

Shipibo Konibo: A Rite of Passage

In Peruvian Amazonia, for the first time in many years, a Shipibo–Konibo community prepare to perform the Aneshiati ceremony: a time of dance, song, festive clothing, and drink—including the sacred tea ayahuasca.

The Medicine of Forgiveness

Benito Arévalo is an onaya: a traditional healer in a Shipibo-Konibo community in Peruvian Amazonia. He explains something of the onaya tradition, and how he came to drink the plant medicine ayahuasca under his father's tutelage. Arévalo leads an ayahuasca ceremony for Westerners, and shares with us something of his understanding of the plants and the onaya tradition.

Voices That Heal

Herlinda Augustin is a Shipibo healer who lives with her family in Peruvian Amazonia. Will she and other healers be able to maintain their ancient tradition despite Western encroachment?

Augusta

This short documentary is the portrait of an 88-year-old woman who lives alone in a log cabin without running water or electricity. Augusta is a non-status Shuswap Indian living in the Williams Lake area of British Columbia. She recalls past times, but lives very much in the present. Self-sufficient, dedicated to her people, she spreads warmth wherever she moves, with her songs and her harmonica.

Black Man's Houses

In 1832 the government of Van Diemen’s Land sent the last Aboriginal resistance fighters into exile at Wybalenna on Flinders Island, bringing an end to the Black War and opening a new chapter in the struggle for justice and survival by Tasmanian Aboriginal people. Black Man’s Houses tells a dramatic story of the quest by Aboriginal people to reclaim the graves of their ancestors against a background of racism and denial. Documenting a moving memorial re-enactment of the funeral of the great chief Manalargenna, the film also charts the cultural strength and resilience of his descendants as they are forced to fight for recognition in a society that is not ready to remember the terrible events of the past.

Os Carajá

Revealed: How to Poison a Planet

A searing examination of the contamination that sparked an international catastrophe and the decades’ long battle with some of the world’s largest chemical companies for justice and compensation.

Milton Santos, Pensador do Brasil

The interview, held on January 4, 2001, was the last given by Professor Milton Santos, who died from cancer on June 24 of the same year. The geographer is gone, but his thoughts remains. Its political and cultural ideals inspire the debate on Brazilian society and the construction of a new world. His statement is a true testimony, a lesson that the world can be better. Based on geography, Milton Santos performs a reading of the contemporary world that reveals the different faces of the phenomenon of globalization. It is in the evidence of contradictions and paradoxes that constitute everyday life that Milton Santos sees the possibilities of building another reality. He innovates when, instead of standing against globalization, proposes and points out ways for another globalization.

The Mountain

For hundreds of years, Taiwan has been under different colonial rules. From the Dutch, the Spanish, the Japanese, and nowadays Republic of China, each regime left their footprints on this island. Only the indigenous people of this island experienced of the process. They were given different names during different periods of colonisation and their cultures have been changed. Through the life of a Truku elder, we see the history of aboriginal recertification movement.

Let Us Persevere in What We Have Resolved Before We Forget

On the island of Tanna, a part of Vanuatu, an archipelago in Melanesia, strange rites are enacted and time passes slowly while the inhabitants await the return of the mysterious John.

The Rebellion of Memory

It became world news in October 2019 when economic reforms in Ecuador led to gas prices suddenly shooting up by 123 percent. People from urban and indigenous communities united in protest. In The Rebellion of Memory we follow the events through their eyes, as the country’s capital, Quito, descends into smoke-filled chaos.

Nostalgia for the Lake

A vision from Limbo, where the canoeist of the eternal lake floats in his boat, between sleep and wakefulness. When he sleeps, he dreams of the everyday of a parallel time. when he wakes up, the same song haunts him again and again. his boat, “ara” (time, in guarani) travels through time like a shooting star.

Spirit of the Reindeer

The third and final part of a trilogy based on Arctic creation myths. The film is a multifaceted tissue weave of myths and traditions reflected in the symbiosis between reindeer, human and landscape.