I'm a Brazilian film director and artist. Through images, I seek to research and approach contemporary languages for creating non-hegemonic stories and imagery.

I'm a Latin American woman living in the United States, and a white woman living in Brazil. This contradictory social location has allowed me to deeply recognize the structural system that has historically privileged me, while simultaneously producing inequalities.

Angela Davis, Djamila Ribeiro, Ailton Krenak and Daniel Munduruku were master-authors who sculpted my worldview. With them, I've learned that, as a director and artist, I make choices that contribute to the creation of an imagery repertoire and a work culture. And that anti-racist and equal rights practices should be a commitment of all those who seek ethics in their existence.

João de Jesus Paes Loureiro, a great reference of Amazonian poetry, said that the enchantment of the Amazon springs from the bottom of the Rio Negro. A river of oceanic dimensions, which weaves and feeds the entire state, not only with food from the forest and water but with its sophisticated mythology and imagery.

Translating the imaginary of the Amazon and the indigenous worldview into non-fiction, contemporary and socio-political film, was the creative foundation that guided and guides all our narratives and aesthetic choices.

On one hand, there is the story of a young biologist, activist, and educator, carrying out grassroots work in the preservation of the indigenous culture and the Amazonian ecosystem in one of the most violent countries in the world, and on the other hand, there is the story of this same young person’s performance character, Uýra, an enchanted being able to confront structural racism and the dismantling of the culture by the current authoritarian Brazilian government.

We could not approach this story with cartesian, linear, eurocentric perspectives. We realized during the investigation process and filming that poetry and metaphor can have a powerful impact when we talk about socio-cultural issues. And that I have on my hands, footage that breaks with the false segmentation that divides art films and social films, as well as it has the potential to provoke such a material, rational, and also so colonial world.

Aesthetically, We bet on artistically blurring the lines and boundaries that divide the documentary and the fictional world, incorporating dramaturgy concepts and using sequences of choreographed dances, performance rituals and musical choices that would transport us to the ancestral Amazonian enchanted world.

- JULIANA CURI, Director