Since launching only a few years ago, Annecy’s “Contrechamp” section has been a haven for powerful independent features, and this year’s selection proves to be especially strong.
Selected to compete among those very few is “Nimuendajú,” the debut feature of Minas Gerais-based director Tania Anaya. A Brazilian-Peruvian co-production, the film tells the story of German-born Curt “Nimuendajú” Unckel (1883–1945), a social scientist who lived with Indigenous people for 40 years.
Curt, portrayed by German actor Peter Ketnath, who also co-produces the film, was baptized in 1906 by the Guarani tribe: “Nimuendajú,” or “the one who made himself a home” in Guarani, and dedicated his life to studying and understanding different cultures.
As such, he witnessed firsthand the persecution of Indigenous people and was one of the first Western activists who tried to shed light on these brutal expulsions.
“Nimuendajú” heads to Annecy with Brazilian international distributor O2 Play already on board, handling both Brazilian and worldwide rights. Ahead of sharing her film with Annecy’s audience, Variety spoke with director Tania Anaya about the experience of creating such a feature, a journey thirteen years in the making.
Tania Anaya
What brought you to animation in the first place?
I was studying at the School of Fine Arts at UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais), and I didn’t think much about animation because I knew little about it apart from Disney and TV cartoons, which didn’t interest me a lot.
At that time, a collaboration agreement was being created between Brazil and Canada, and this included the creation of animation centers in Brazil in partnership with the National Film Board of Canada. A Brazilian animator, Marcos Magalhães, came to the School of Fine Arts to present this collaboration, and I was delighted by the films he showcased. There were films with vastly different techniques, using oil pastels, colored pencils, acetate, cut-outs, painting, pinscreen…
A center for animation was created at the School, and I started studying at the Minas Gerais Animation Center. From then on, I immersed myself in this universe. To this day, Norman McLaren, an incredible artist and one of the founders of the NFB, remains one of my greatest inspirations.
How did you encounter the figure of Curt Nimuendajú?
I wanted to talk about Curt Nimuendajú because he lived between two worlds. “Nimuendajú” is the story of a self-taught man who abandoned his last name and adopted the Indigenous one.
Nimuendajú spent years living between those two worlds: six months in Indigenous villages in the interior of Brazil and six months at home in the city of Belém, recording everything he had researched and experienced. He lived a life interlinked between the “white world” and the “Indigenous world,” between the countryside and the city. Studious, focused, passionate and observant, he reinvented himself with each Indigenous people, creating bonds of affection, learning and recording.
Curt Nimuendajú managed to gather and organize the largest amount of data about Brazilian Indigenous peoples to date, studying almost 50 of them. His work is still relevant today.
To me, his passionate dedication is inspiring, and Nimuendajú’s trajectory allows us to tackle Indigenous issues.
How has the material you’ve found throughout your research influenced your creative process?
Our Nimuendajú is based on historical references, ethnographic material he wrote, and on memorial records either left by himself in his diaries and letters or by other researchers who studied him. His texts and photographs transmit his passionate first-person presence, yet since this subject addresses complex issues beyond historical research, we had to devise a unique approach.
We invited anthropologist Elena Welper, a specialist on Curt Nimuendajú, to advise us throughout the entire process of making the film. In addition to her great knowledge in Nimuendajú’s collections, she also translated much of the material from German and transmitted to us her enthusiasm, pointing out details that would otherwise go unnoticed.
During the scriptwriting stage, we also had the assistance of anthropologist Julio Cezar Melatti, an expert on the Timbira people, studied by Nimuendajú and presented in the film.
Our greatest challenge was to synthesize all this in an 80-minute film.
How has the involvement of the Indigenous communities you’ve worked with influenced the film?
Filming on location, experiencing and feeling the daily life of each Indigenous people, listening to their languages and songs were fundamental to making this film. This choice was made to avoid general concepts and clichés about Indigenous peoples and to show that each people is a universe in itself, unique, with its own aesthetic, cultural, social and political repertoire.
‘Nimuendajú’ Shooting Apinaye Tribe
This experience had a strong impact on our team as it brought a layer of understanding that the script and storyboard did not cover. Peter Ketnath’s interpretation as Curt Nimuendajú was especially enriched by this experience.
Another important aspect of the on-location filming was the ambient sounds, dialogues and ritual songs recorded in the Indigenous villages. This material was the basis for building the soundtrack on which the entire animation was based.
The opportunity to shoot in the Indigenous villages revealed layers that we hadn’t even thought of before and prepared us to animate from a new basis. The acting with the Indigenous people worked well, there was curiosity, collaboration and the most delicate situations were solved.
For the filming, the Apinayé re-enacted a custom described and photographed by Curt Nimuendajú, which hadn’t taken place for 40 years. The re-enactment involved the whole village and ended with a song in which they asked their ancestors to forgive them for forgetting.
Among the Canela-Rankokamekrá, the generation of uncles, grandparents and relatives who were involved with Curt Nimuendajú in the 1930s were played by their grandchildren, nephews and relatives, consequently giving the film a moving and powerful tone.
It’s interesting to see that in the film, your main character isn’t all perfect and heroic. Why was it important to question his own heroism?
To quote Eisenstein: “How must I write so that the man, no matter who he may be, shall emerge from the pages of the story about him with that strength of physical palpability of his existence, with that cogency of his half-imaginary reality, with which I see and feel him?”
Curt Nimuendajú was a man of his time, full of imperfections and wrong choices, which in today’s eyes are even more serious. However, his tenacious struggle and undeniable affection for the Indigenous peoples with whom he lived and allied himself is still very relevant today. His imperfections are also part of his humanity.
What were the main technical challenges of creating this feature film?
From the start, I chose to film before animating. We filmed in 2012, with a very small crew, and our stay in the Indigenous villages was an adventure full of surprises and improvisations. We didn’t have access to tools like the internet, telephone or sometimes electricity, so we only used natural light.
Although the differences in language sometimes caused confusion, filming in an Indigenous area is a physical and metaphysical experience, and I’m very happy to have experienced it. Getting to know the people and environments better transformed the story we wanted to tell. As I mentioned earlier, we made significant changes to the script after going to the Indigenous villages.
Being a period film, even with actual footage, many adaptations had to be made during the animation. For example, the Indigenous people wore shorts during filming, but were animated as if they were naked. Most had short hair and had to be animated with long hair. Everything had to be adjusted to characterize the early 20th century.
‘Nimuendajú’ Shooting Apinaye Tribe
Our team of animators also had to be trained to make realistic drawings of the human body, as most of them came from animations with a cartoonish style.
We didn’t want to use the filmed images as simple rotoscopy, strictly following the photographs. We wanted to imprint our own aesthetic to the film, with variations in lines and emphasis on anatomy, in the style of Austrian artist Egon Schiele. We wanted to stylize the characters, free ourselves from the imposition of the filmed image and enter the realm of imagination. To do so, we only used the filmed images for the key drawings; everything else was done in traditional 2D animation.
At each stage, new challenges presented themselves. In Brazil, there are still few feature-length animation productions, so we still lack some specialized professionals and systematic paths. There was a lot of doing and learning in this fascinating process, which is still taking place today.
How would you describe the state of animation in Brazil today, and has it evolved during your career?
With the return of the Lula government in 2023, audiovisual public policies were resumed, and we found ourselves with a certain stability and opportunities for the sector. Associations, unions and groups are also helping to regulate the animation market, which has grown and now has many people working in it, consolidating an ecosystem.
However, it is still necessary to make adjustments to these public policies, taking into account animation’s particularities. An animated movie takes years to make, “Nimuendajú” took 13 years. That’s why it needs more support. Animation is more expensive, but it has been scaled down below live-action production budgets.
Even in this context, there has been a significant increase in the production of series, video games and feature films in Brazil. This stimulates the training of new artists and technicians and also increases interest in animation schools and international co-productions.
The film’s topic is very relevant today, as minorities all over the world face threats of harassment and sometimes their very extermination. How do you feel sharing this film today?
The heart of the film is the conflict between the “white world” and the “Indigenous world” in the first half of the 20th century. Unfortunately, this conflict is still relevant more than a century later.
Bloody conflicts continued to occur throughout the 20th century. For example, in 1950, in southern Brazil, the Xetá people were exterminated. In the 1960s, the construction of an extensive highway in the southwest of the Amazon wiped out dozens of Indigenous communities. The same thing happened in the early 1970s in the region where the Trans-Amazonian highway was constructed.
The Indigenous peoples who survived all this barbarity are now facing the same list of homicidal intolerance. The legacy of Bolsonaro’s far-right government, from 2019 to 2022, still has a strong impact and leaves its mark in arsons, murders of Indigenous leaders and land invasions by miners and loggers.
This ancestral conflict had to be presented in “Nimuendajú,” as our character, when relating to his Indigenous companions, finds himself in the epicenter of these issues.