Cine Latino 2025 Highlights Indigenous Climate Guardians

Written by: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Riccarda Flemmer
With collaboration from:
Lilian Eichorst - Research Assistant
Zahid Zamudio - Research Assistant
23 - 30 April 2025 - Tübingen, Stuttgart, Freiburg, Reutlingen

From April 23 to 30, 2025, the Cine Latino film festival brought powerful cinematic and political insights from Latin America to audiences in Tübingen, Stuttgart, Freiburg, and Reutlingen. This year’s program featured a special thematic focus titled “Indigenous Amazonia – Guardians of the Climate?”, which emphasized the voices, struggles, and worldviews of Indigenous peoples protecting the rainforest.

A key moment of the festival was the panel discussion held on Saturday, April 26 at Café Haag in Tübingen, where filmmakers and experts shared their experiences and perspectives on Indigenous worldviews and environmental justice. Participants included Eriberto Gualinga (Helena de Sarayaku), Stephanie Boyd and Miguel Aroz Cartagena (Karuara, la gente del río), and participatory filmmaker Maja Tillmann Salas (The Rights of Mother Earth). They discussed how Indigenous communities—who inhabit some of the most biodiverse areas of the Amazon—understand the forest and rivers not as resources, but as living beings with rights. The Kichwa community of Sarayaku in Ecuador, for instance, promotes the concept of Kawsak Sacha (Living Forest), demanding legal recognition of the forest as a subject of rights. Similarly, the Kukama people in Karuara view the river as a spiritual entity deserving protection. This tension is also visible in Kinra, directed by Marco Panatonic, where the protagonist navigates between urban alienation and Indigenous identity. These Indigenous cosmologies—such as the Andean concept of Buen Vivir (Sumaq Kawsay), where all beings are alive and interconnected—stand in stark contrast to Western legal systems that define nature as property, object, or resource. Photos from the event can be found here.

Eriberto Gualinga’s documentary Helena de Sarayaku (Ecuador, 2022) opened this thematic focus with a moving portrait of 17-year-old Helena, who spends her school holidays in her community in the Ecuadorian Amazon. There, she witnesses the spiritual vitality of the rainforest and the threats posed by oil companies and climate change. She gradually emerges as a young activist, voicing her community’s struggles on a global stage.

Complementing this narrative, Karuara, la gente del río (Peru/Canada, 2024), co-directed by Stephanie Boyd and Miguel Aroz Cartagena, immerses viewers in the mystical and political world of the Kukama people along the Marañón River in Peru. While water spirits—the Karuara—dwell beneath the surface, the Kukama resist extractive threats above it. The film blends everyday life, myth, and striking animations, earning awards at festivals in Lima and Toronto.
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In her article “Im Einklang mit dem Regenwald” (In Harmony with the Rainforest) published in the Schwäbisches Tagblatt on April 28, 2025, journalist Dorothee Hermann emphasizes how these films not only document the lived realities of Indigenous communities but also reflect resistance, cultural continuity, and hope. According to the filmmakers, these stories are both mirrors and calls to action—urging broader recognition of Indigenous knowledge systems and struggles.
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The Cine Latino 2025 festival demonstrated that climate justice and Indigenous rights are deeply interconnected. Protecting the Amazon means listening to and supporting those who have safeguarded it for generations.
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Credits: Article “Im Einklang mit dem Regenwald” by Dorothee Hermann, Schwäbisches Tagblatt, April 28, 2025.