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The U.S. cinematographer-turned-director
follows members of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau tribe as they try to stop
farmers and settlers from taking their ancestral lands in the
state of Rondonia.
The tribes "are doing it to defend themselves and their home,"
Pritz told Reuters on Wednesday in an interview.
"But it's also really important for the rest of us outside of
Brazil to recognise that they're doing it for us too, and that
their work is helping save all of us from the worst effects of
our own emissions on this warming planet."
Illegal logging and mining in the Brazilian Amazon has surged
under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who has pushed to
allow more mining and commercial farming there to reduce poverty
while cutting back environmental enforcement and defunding
indigenous agency Funai.
In making what is his first feature-length documentary, Pritz
also spent time with the farmers who dream of carving out their
own patch of land.
"They see themselves as these virtuous pioneers going out and
turning wilderness into private property," he said.
"...One of the settlers says Brazil was created like this and
every other country too and he's right. Most colonial states
were birthed out of indigenous land expropriation ... and so it
felt really important to all of us to try to understand that and
capture those people in those parts of the world."
Attacks on Brazil's indigenous people and invasions of their
lands by illegal miners and loggers, mainly in the Amazon,
increased sharply in 2021, escalating an already "terrifying"
situation, the Catholic Church's Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi)
said last month.
Environmental activists are likewise in the firing line.
In June, British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert
Bruno Pereira were murdered during a research trip in a remote
part of the Amazon invaded by illegal fishermen, loggers and
gold miners.
"The situation, especially for indigenous people, is getting
worse," Pritz said.
"The Territory" opens in UK cinemas on Friday.
(Reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; editing by John
Stonestreet)
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