Roberto Romero Ribeiro Junior

“Yõg ãtak: My father, Kaiowá” is a documentary feature film project of approximately 90 minutes. The film follows the journey of the sisters Sueli and Maisa Maxakali to Mato Grosso do Sul to meet their father Luis Kaiowá, from whom they were separated as children, during the Brazilian military dictatorship, when the Funai chiefs decided to expel the small group Guarani-Kaiowá, ethnicity from Mato Grosso do Sul, who lived more than twenty years among the Maxakali, inhabitants of the northeast of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Through the personal search of the two sisters, the film reveals a history of walks and exchanges between the two indigenous peoples that for centuries have resisted state violence and the devastation of their territories, dedicating a good part of their existence and resistance to an intense ritual life, populated by songs, dances and spirits. The project is an offshoot of a decade of collaborative filmmaking with the Maxakali collectives and intertwines autobiography, history and ethnography to tell a chapter of the history of resistance of the Maxakali and Guarani-Kaiowá peoples, who today live in some of the smallest demarcated lands in the country and share an impressive history of physical and cultural resistance against centuries of violence.