“We are all the forest and the world to someone,” says Eami, whose name means ‘Forest and World.’ The five-year-old is not just an ordinary girl: she is Asojá, the bird-god-woman who carries the spirit of the Ayoreo Totobiegosode. She must now take a flight through the ancestral land and through time on a quest to heal the unbearable pain of her people.

The film is categorized as a documentary for lack of a more suitable term. In truth, Eami isn’t either fiction or non-fiction – it’s a glimpse of the world through the eyes of the native people of the Paraguayan Chaco, the territory with the highest deforestation rate of the world.

We hear the little girl’s words sounding tender and pleasant like a bird’s chattering – a bird that we can miraculously understand. And not just her; we can perceive her animal friends, the shaman elders, the trees screaming.

Our understanding is only partially owed to the beautiful traveling shots and the girl’s narration. We feel transported on the wings of the bird-god-woman because we, the audience, become the eyes of the willfully blinded girl; the girl that won’t open her eyes. By becoming the vehicle for her mourning, we feel her pain; by feeling her pain, our hearts open with sympathy: “I felt the compassion of the forest and it felt mine.”

We momentarily learn to perceive reality the way the Ayoreo Totbiegosode do. Director Paz Encina spoke of the friendship she witnessed between an Ayoreo child and an eagle. The child would hunt for the bird and call it with a whistle. The eagle would descend with his “giant wings,” pick up the food and leave. Even though she tried, it was impossible to capture the scene because the bird would not come near the crew.

The pre-conquest consciousness of the indigenous community opens its view to a universe that pulsates with life. “They don’t make a distinction between humans, animals, and plants,” Encina points out. “Through the stories they tell, the community establishes a dialogue with animals while living with plants.”

I felt the compassion of the forest and it felt mine.

Eami’s words work like a magic spell. Through them, we can start to envision a world that transcends rational thinking, fragmented reality, scientific objectivity. Yet, this cosmos of turtles, winds and children is in danger of extinction. “Eami is a story of the displaced,” as Encina puts it. Is it possible, we wonder, for a people who are bound to their land and to the life that it sustains, to live without it?

Is it possible for the Ayoreo Totobiegosode to live where the coñone, – the “insensitive” or the white people – banish them to? To live in shame for who they are? To “heal a wound that is in so much pain”? “Are we the same when we lose those we love?” Eami asks.

In a reenactment scene, a group of Ayoreo people has been rounded up by exploiters. They are thrown clothes. They are made to feel ashamed for their nakedness. A boy is given a shirt. He looks at it, on his palms, not knowing what to do. Then he puts his face in the shirt. It’s easy to imagine that the shame he feels for his dignity being torn apart is far greater.

“You get to know the people in the community and discover their stories, experience situations with them, and generate friendships,” Encina says. “I felt and still feel helpless when I see the problems in which they are immersed. I do not know what else to do. I see what they are going through, how they are losing their original way of life. That makes me very sad.”

For over six years Encina made an effort to get to know the Ayoreo people from within. “It is not a film that can be done following a single agenda and timeframe,” she points out; “there is a whole community with its own cosmovision and notion of time.”

In Paraguay, “surrounding a community is not so difficult, but crossing cultural barriers was complex,” the director explains. Throughout the writing process, she had the help of an intercultural consultant, José Elizeche, who communicated with Taguide Picanerál, an Ayoreo young leader.

“We worked a lot in establishing trust between each other,” Encina continues. “We had to learn how to live with each other. For them, many things we do are absurd, like going to the restroom when the whole forest is at our disposal. Or having to repeat a scene. It seemed absurd to them, but we would keep on conversing and understanding each other, appreciating each other.”

The film received the top prize at International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Tiger Competition. Even though Encina and her team are delighted, they still wish that “the film’s success translates into some welfare for the community.”

“Open your eyes” is a command often repeated throughout the narration, as a call to “return to the bush because they are needed there, “explains Encina.

The Ayoreo Totobiegosode were expelled from their land and forced to migrate. They were cut from their traditional way of life and subjected to starvation. There were massive exoduses from their territories in 1989, 1994, and 2004 – all driven by land exploitation and economic interests.

More than 25,000 hectares of forest are cut down every month in the Paraguayan Chaco, the community’s ancestral land. After 20 years of legal battles, in 2018 they finally succeeded in securing an 18,000-hectare farm.

“There is a precautionary measure to secure the territory, to stop deforestation,” Encina informs. “But this is only a precautionary measure, which stopped because of the pandemic. It would require a state order. The community believes that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will request reports from the state again this year and that negotiations will resume. With the pandemic, everything came to a standstill.”

The struggle cannot and will not end until the coñone can hear the trees scream, loud and clear, louder than their saws.