Apenas El Sol

Arami Ullón 2020 Switzerland, Paraguay Ayoreo & Spanish with English subtitles 75 minutes

AYOREO PEOPLE, FORCED MIGRATION, MEMORY, COLONIALISM, ENVIRONMENT

Facing the consequences of a violent uprooting, Mateo Sobode Chiqueno has been recording stories, songs, and testimonies of his Ayoreo people since the seventies. In an attempt to preserve fragments of a disappearing culture, Mateo walks across communities in the arid and desolate Paraguayan Chaco region, and registers on cassettes the experiences of other Ayoreo who, like him, were born in the vast forest, free and nomadic, without any contact with white civilization, until religious missionaries forced them to abandon their ancestral territory, their means of subsistence, their beliefs and their home. Apenas El Sol is Paraguay’s official submission for International Feature Film, Best Documentary Feature, at the 94th Academy Award.