Echoes of Earth

Against the Tide, Sarvnik Kaur’s breathtaking documentary about Indigenous fishermen in Mumbai, India, dispels the myth that cinematic beauty has to do with the power of the camera or the glossiness of the image. Shot by Ashok Meena, the film finds beauty, simply, in perspective... The film avoids easy binaries of tradition and modernity, and instead brings to vivid life the ecosystem that encompasses both Rakesh and Ganesh — one that has been wrecked by corporate greed and climate change.

Eschewing formal production techniques as well as any dominant-culture framing, Brazilian filmmaker Juliana Curi translates the energy of the Amazon into a work of nonfiction that serves as a conduit for the feelings of indigenous people [...] The best moments connect visually, almost as living paintings. Decked out in colored contact lenses and stunning handcrafted costumes, Uýra engages in a variety of performances.

Set in a rural area in the outskirts of Barcelona, Pau Faus’s keen-eyed, witty and compassionate second documentary Fauna... juxtaposes the life of a local goatherd and life in a nearby research laboratory to explore the tangled contemporary relationship between man, nature and science. It’s a theme which the pandemic brought very much to the fore and is handled by Faus with enjoyably light touch, gently lacerating our absurdities while keeping a compassionate eye on the fascinating and unfathomable contradictions that make us who we are.