‘The Territory’ Documents Destruction Of Brazilian Rainforest, And How One Indigenous Community Is Fighting Back – Contenders TV: The Nominees

deadline.com:

In the National Geographic documentary The Territory, illegal land grabbers in a section of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest burn down thousands of acres to clear space for cattle farming, buzzsaw giant trees left and right and build settlements in violation of Brazilian law.

The destruction of their forest home has been devastating for the Indigenous Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau people, who are supposed to be protected from such incursions upon their territory. “From the 1970s onward, what my father says is that a lot of white people came, and they were splitting up, dividing up the land,” said Tangãi Uru-eu-wau-wau during an appearance at Deadline’s Contenders Television: The Nominees event.

The Indigenous cinematographer earned an Emmy nomination for his work on The Territory, one of three nominations for the film. “There were people invading that were not Indigenous people — the illegal miners, the cattle ranchers.

And this was happening all around where we lived. And we were lacking a lot of food actually [as a result]. Even though we had demarcated territory, it was never respected.” The decimation of the Amazon rainforest profoundly affects not only the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, but people across the globe. “We discover a new species in the Amazon rainforest every two days, on average,” said filmmaker Alex Pritz, who is nominated both for his direction and his cinematography on The Territory.