Birdwatchers (film)

Birdwatchers (La terra degli uomini rossi) is a 2008 Brazilian-Italian drama film directed by Marco Bechis and starring Claudio Santamaria, Alicélia Batista Cabreira, and Chiara Caselli. It depicts the breakdown of a community of Guarani-Kaiowa native Indians whilst attempting to reclaim their ancestral land from a local farmer.

Plot
A boat with tourists is sailing through the jungle. Suddenly they come face-to-face with Indians, naked apart from their paint, with self-made weapons at the ready. The tourists sail on excitedly. The Indians put on their jeans and collect their wages.

The Guarani, one of Brazil's oldest Indian communities, are forced to live in a reservation. A small group decide to leave and settle in a traditional territory that has belonged to white men for several generations.

Cast

 * Claudio Santamaria as Roberto
 * Alicélia Batista Cabreira as Lia
 * Chiara Caselli as Beatrice
 * Abrísio da Silva Pedro as Osvaldo
 * Ademilson Concianza Verga as Irineu
 * Ambrósio Vilhalva as Nádio
 * Matheus Nachtergaele as Dimas
 * Fabiane Pereira da Silva as Maria
 * Eliane Juca da Silva as Mami
 * Nelson Concianza as Nhanderu
 * Leonardo Medeiros as Moreira
 * Inéia Arce Gonçalves as maid
 * Poli Fernandez Souza as Tito
 * Urbano Palácio as Josimar

Production
The film was shot in Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul over ten weeks in 2007 with a cast whose most members had never acted before and without use of a script.

The songs "Sacris solemnis" and "O gloriosa virginum" were composed by the Italian Jesuit Domenico Zipoli who went to South America to live at the Jesuit reductions.

Awards

 * 2010 One World Media Award in the Drama category, by unanimous vote of the jury.