Eami means ‘forest’ in Ayoreo. It also means ‘world’. The story happens in the Paraguayan Chaco, the territory with the highest deforestation rate in the world. 25,000 hectares of forest are being deforested a month in this territory which would mean an average of 841 hectares a day or 35 hectares per hour. The forest barely lives and this only due to a reserve that the Totobiegosode people achieved in a legal manner. They call Chaidi this place which means ancestral land or the place where we always lived and it is part of the "Ayoreo Totobiegosode Natural and Cultural Heritage". Before this, they had to live through the traumatic situation of leaving the territory behind and surviving a war. It is the story of the Ayoreo Totobiegosode people, told from the point of view of Asoja, a bird-god with the ability to bring an omniscient- temporal gaze, who becomes the narrator of this story developed in a crossing between documentary and fiction.
Cinematography
The forest breathes before it chokes
Sound
Ayoreo language and chainsaws in brutal conversation
Direction
Encina dissolves documentary into possession
Director
Paz Encina
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Ayoreo are among the last uncontacted peoples in the Americas; some still live in voluntary isolation in the Chaco, making this film's existence politically fraught.
Director Paz Encina spent years building trust to shoot on Chaidi; cast members are actual Totobiegosode survivors, not actors, and their real names are used.
PY
