Dual forces of climate change and cultural genocide overlap to devastating effect in
The Territory, threatening not just a native community but a wider ecosystem — and cheered on by the actively hostile powers that be. Riveting and despairing in equal measure, freshman director
Alex Pritz’s documentary immerses us over the course of three years in the lives, livelihoods and dwindling homeland of the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people, whose supposedly protected patch of Amazon rainforest is under attack from all sides by farmers, miners and settlers who think nothing of deforesting swaths of jungle that don’t belong to them. For the Uru-eu-wau-wau, themselves rapidly diminishing in number, fighting back is essential but ugly, and anybody hoping for a comfortingly inspirational takeaway from “The Territory” may be disappointed. [...] And while the presence of Darren Aronofsky as a producer may be an additional draw to prospective distributors for this National Geographic-style doc, more telling production credits here go to the Uru-eu-wau-wau themselves. Not content merely to be sympathetic victims under the gaze of the camera, they often wield it themselves, and the film benefits from their righteously inflamed point of view.
Pritz shares camera duties here with tribe member Tangae Uru-eu-wau-wau, who brings tense in-the-moment immediacy to footage effectively shot from the frontline of this land battle. Source: Lodge, Guy. "The Territory Review: Indigenous Brazilians Stand Their Ground in an Urgent Environmental Docu-Thriller."
Variety.com, sec. Film, 22 January 2022.
https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/the-territory-review-1235160642.
