NEW INDIGENOUS FILMS
A showcase of films from this year’s Indigenous Voices series, which centers the wisdom, accomplishments, stories, and struggles of Indigenous people around the living world
Tuesday, May 26 | 7:00 p.m. | The Clinton Street Theater
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Info about individual films follows.
LANAWARU
Directed by Angello Faccini Rueda
2024 | Mexico and Colombia | 15 minutes
Yukuna and Spanish with English subtitles
Official Selection | Indigenous Voices | Regional Premiere
LANAWARU (meaning 'grandfather caiman') is a short film, set in Puerto Caimán, where the swirling mists and waters of the Amazon are alive with mystical spirits and hidden dangers. When a local community member disappears, a boy faces an early memory, seeking comfort in the Indigenous traditions, prayers and guidance from his grandfather. The film highlights the sacred healing and protection rituals which are the core of the spiritual system for conservation of the territory, and through which the local and Indigenous communities maintain a balanced relationship between people and nature.
Filming took place in Puerto Caimán, La Pedrera, Amazonas, a remote village on the Rio Caquetá in the southeastern region of Colombia. LANAWARU is the result of a collective effort with the multi-ethnic communities Boricada and Curare in the Southeast of the Colombian Amazon. The film's creation process was carried out according to the communities' own organizational principles. Therefore, artistic and practical decisions were made collectively in "mambeaderos," dialogue sessions in Malokas where the entire community participated in the film's creation process. Lanawaru is a collective contribution to the Indigenous resistance struggle in this region.
OCEANBONE
Directed by Lani Cupchoy
2025 | USA | 9 minutes
Bauan and English with English subtitles
Official Selection | Indigenous Voices | Regional Premiere
Across oceans and centuries, Indigenous ancestors remain trapped in museum vaults—stolen, studied, and silenced. OCEANBONE is a visually haunting and deeply personal journey into the fight for repatriation, where history, poetry, and activism collide. Anchored by a powerful interview with repatriation scholar Dr. Tarisi Vunidilo, the film interweaves the voices of four Native Pacific Island storytellers who channel the spirits of their ancestors, speaking in rhythms of loss, resistance, and homecoming. Through striking imagery of museum corridors, ancestral rituals, and the vast Pacific, OCEANBONE reveals the colonial legacies that displaced these remains—and the urgent movement to return them. As the waves carry their names once more, the film stands as both an elegy and a call to justice: the ancestors must go home.
RED-SHADED GREEN
Directed by Johannes Vang
2025 | Norway | 5 minutes
Southern Sámi with English subtitles
Official Selection | Indigenous Voices | Regional Premiere
When “green energy” comes at the expense of traditional Sámi life and culture, this succinct poetic documentary questions the sustainability of combating climate change by replacing one form of destruction with another.
THE RIVER REMEMBERS
Directed by Jordan Riber
2025 | USA | 60 minutes
English with English captions
Official Selection | Indigenous Voices | Regional Premiere
THE RIVER REMEMBERS follows the intertwined struggles of the Indigenous people of the Elwha and Klamath Rivers as they lead the two largest dam removals in U.S. history. These rivers have always been lifelines, and their decline has mirrored the erasure of Native ways of life.
The film braids together intimate family stories and sweeping historical battles: parents teaching their children to fish, catastrophic salmon kills that galvanized action, and generations who refused to give up a century-long fight.
From the joy of witnessing water flow free on the Elwha to the hard-fought victory of the Undam the Klamath campaign, THE RIVER REMEMBERS reveals a movement in which ecological restoration and cultural survival are inseparable. More than a story of loss, it is a vision of resilience, healing, and the possibility of renewal for future generations.