EAMI review – dream-like ode to the Ayoreo Totobiegosode people

EAMI tells the story of the Ayoreo Totobiegosode people, an indigenous tribe who live spread out across the Paraguayan and Bolivian lowlands. Like many indigenous groups in Latin America, their recent history is marked by violence and colonial terrorism, as demand for agricultural grasslands from the cities forces the landscape's original inhabitants away.

Documentaries about such worlds tend to be issue-focused, and whilst they can make for watchable, rage-inducing stuff, they tend to do so based on an outlook that reflects the terms and understandings of “our” world: moral fury, legal strategies and injustice. Such a strategy traditionally allows us to understand the issues at hand, but rarely are we allowed to see from the perspective of indigenous groups.

Paraguayan director Paz Encina heads in the other direction, blending documentary and fiction (a common theme in many Rotterdam films this year, alongside The Last Ride of the Wolves and Blue Island, two other highlights), with audio testimony of the Ayoreo experience, all mixed up with the journey of our eponymous character, “Eami,” who flees from the forests as settlers arrive.

The camera attempts to fix itself entirely in the point-of-view of the Ayoreo. Everything we see is rooted in the ground, in the physical Earth. The camera often points slightly downwards at the vistas, the gaze paying attention to the land in front of us. We only turn skywards to note changes in the weather. The audio testimony that forms much of EAMI’s dialogue is exclusively in voiceover, though many of these voiceovers are introduced with an image of an Ayoreo person, eyes shut, looming upwards (presumably this is the speaker, though it isn't clear). Separating what we hear and what we see gives EAMI the further resonance of a dream, of something being remembered, and being remembered from the perspective of the witness.

Pushing further into the dreamworld might leave us assuming the lack of a political edge, but as scenes develop, it becomes clearer than ever what Encina is hoping to achieve with a gradual shift to a more nightmarish world: red-streaked night sky from forest fires, barbed wire fences slicing across open fields, the encroaching threat of settlers. The slow pacing, with many static shots, allows us to study closely how these natural environments are shifting.

If the film suffers from anything, it's perhaps the unfortunate fact of the coronavirus pushing Rotterdam’s programme online to a streaming model. For all the benefits this brings in allowing a wider audience of viewers across the globe, it also cuts away at the sensory immersion and communal experience that the cinema offers and that EAMI needs. Because this is a film that functions best in that strange half-reverie that the cinematic experience can produce, the power it has to envelop us entirely in new perspectives and ways of seeing the world.

EAMI screened as part of the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2022. A UK release date is yet to be announced.