A year in the life of an Indigenous family who journey deep into the Amazon rainforest to escape Ecuador’s COVID-19 crisis

In early 2020, the Kichwa people of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon were contending with two centuries-old threats: attempted exploitation of their lands by oil interests, and deadly diseases brought by outsiders. Directed by the Sarayaku Kichwa filmmaker Eriberto Gualinga, The Returnfollows a family that, amid Ecuador’s devastating COVID-19 crisis, chooses to uproot from their home and journey further into the jungle for protection. Encompassing roughly a year, the short film captures how Indigenous communities in Ecuador are constantly forced to assert their rights to protect their culture and lives. But, resisting familiar ‘Indigenous-peoples-in-peril’ narratives, which often portray such communities as powerless and their cultures as dying, Gualinga’s film celebrates Kichwa resilience […]

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