Winner at this year’s Rotterdam festival, Eami is an ethnographic docu-fiction hybrid that poetically – yet without compromise – exposes the extent to which the original inhabitants of the Paraguayan primeval forests were dispossessed of their home. Now, thanks to this lyrical yet clearly intelligible film, they are finally given the space that is normally denied them.
Eami is a girl whose village and the forests around it have been destroyed by farmers eager to acquire land. In the language of the original inhabitants of Paraguay, eami means “forest” and “world”. In her gently paced film, director Paz Encina juxtaposes a peaceful existence and the brutal uprooting of people, with whose home environment she finds an intuitive connection. Although nothing will ever be the same again, Eami refuses to give up and passes through the places that will always remain a part of her. Can this last journey among the animals – fundamental to her as she is to them – lessen the pain of loss? This persuasively mystical film gradually lays bare the unique world of these indigenous people, to whom it gives a voice, both literally and metaphorically.
Viktor Palák
85 min / Color, DCP
Director Paz Encina
/ Screenplay Paz Encina
/ Dir. of Photography Guillermo Saposnik
/ Music Joraine Picanerai, Fernando Velázquez Vezzetti
/ Sound Javier Umpierrez
/ Editor Jordana Berg
/ Producer Paz Encina, Gabriela Sabaté, Christoph Hahnheiser, Joslyn Barnes
/ Production Silencio Cine
/ Coproduction Sabate Films, Gaman Cine, Barraca Producciones, Piano, Black Forest Films, Louverture Films, Sagax, Revolver Amsterdam, MPM Film, Eux vives productions
/ Cast Anel Picanerai, Curia Chiquejno Etacoro, Ducubaide Chiquenoi, Basui Picanerai Etacore, Lucas Etacori, Guesa Picanerai, Lazaro Dosapei Cutamijo, Catebia Picanere
/ Sales MPM Premium
Paz Encina (1971, Asunción, Paraguay). Selected filmography: Paraguayan Hammock (Hamaca Paraguaya, 2005), A Wind from the South (Viento Sur, 2011, short), Memory Exercises (Ejercicios de memoria, 2016).
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