Day by day

Indiens en sursis

Switzerland // 2012 // Couleur // 28'
French/Brazilian/English with French subtitles

While the last Amazon Indians are facing the threat of extinction from gold-washers and loggers who pollute and destroy their territory and while organised resistance begins to become a reality, some peoples – like the Yanomami and the Kayapo – are mobilizing against the exploitation of subterranean resources and of the Amazonian forest, against the gold-seekers and, above all, against the construction of the 6 km-wide Belo Monte mega-dam that will condemn more than 16,000 indigenous people to exile. They are fighting so that their right to land is respected and their natural environment preserved.

Film-maker Daniel Schweizer, who knows the region intimately, takes us into the heart of the Amazon and lets us listen to the voices of these indigenous inhabitants who refuse to disappear in silence and indifference. Well beyond the ethnological study or classic reportage, Indiens en sursis captures the Amerindian vision of the world at the beginning of the 21st century.

Daniel Schweizer