Voices at the Threshold: Memory and the Essay Film among the Tikmũ’ũn Maxakali

Abstract

This study analyzes the film Nũhũ yãg mũ yõg hãm: This Land Is Our Land! (2020), directed by Isael Maxakali, Sueli Maxakali, Carolina Canguçu, and Roberto Romero, investigating how the first-person narrative of the Tikmũ’ũn Maxakali people articulates Indigenous subjectivity and the aesthetics of the essay film. The research problem seeks to understand how collaborative direction, oral testimonies, and traditional chants function as devices of memory and as forms of counterpoint to the official narratives of Brazilian history. The theoretical framework engages with studies on essay film, Indigenous cinema, and contemporary Indigenous arts, drawing on authors who discuss the reflective dimension of cinema and the aesthetic and political agency of Indigenous productions. The methodology adopted is analytical-reflexive and interdisciplinary, combining film analysis with contributions from history and sound analysis. The film is understood not merely as a documentary record, but as a situated gesture of knowledge production, in which first-person narration, Maxakali chanting, and oral testimonies function as forms of a living archive. The results indicate that the work articulates essayistic aesthetics and Indigenous protagonism to produce a cinema that operates as a space of cultural resistance, elaborating historical memory and reaffirming connections between territory, collective experience, and identity.