The Wind Blows the Border

We are reminded of the words of Canadian indigenous author Thomas King, from his book The Inconvenient Indian: "The problem has been land, and it will always be land."

In southern Brazil, a community of Guaranis is fighting for its survival and the reconquest of its unceded lands, occupied by xenophobic, profit-hungry farmers and supporters of Bolsonaro's far-right government, elected on an anti-indigenous platform. Discriminated against, expelled and even murdered with impunity, the very existence of the Guarani-Kaiow tribe is threatened in a country that protects powerful farmers and bulldozes sacred forests to turn them into cattle farms and sugar cane plantations.

The two directors put the emblematic figures of both camps in the ring: a Guarani-Kaiow activist and a ruthless lawyer and farmer. On one side, the gentleness and beauty of a world in peril are poetically immortalized in images; on the other, a capitalist, aggressive and fascist world, is filmed with distance and rigidity. The filmmakers have cinematically created a democratic space, sorely lacking in Bolsonaro's Brazil, where the different opinions emanating from civil society, including those of the silent and suppressed voices, confront each other in the public square. Isn't this what documentary film is all about?

In the form of a plea, The Wind Blows the Border is a chilling witness to the destructive policies of a government that has done nothing but encourage hatred and extermination of the First Peoples, while burning the forest, our memory and our oxygen. Could Lula da Silva's return to the presidency put an end to the assault on Mother Nature and the violence against indigenous peoples?

Bruno Boëz
Producer, critic and programmer