The Ethnographer

The Wichí are an indigenous South American people, found mainly in northern Argentina (interestingly, another VIFF film this year, the fictional Beauty, also deals with the Wichí). Like many pre-Columbian survivors, they continue to face threats to their existence: though their lands are protected in theory, the practice is that uglier forms of agribusiness steadily steal their traditional territory with the open assistance of local authorities. Their once fertile grasslands and forests are being lost to cattle operations, loggers and large soybean farms. The overworked land is becoming desert, while the Wichí themselves face the destruction of their low-impact, semi-nomadic way of life and an increased reliance on temporary employment with the very people driving them off their land.

Given this setting, Ulises Rosell’s The Ethnographer, set among the Wichí as they face indifference, corruption and political manipulation, could well be a righteously earnest screed. But Rosell, whose first film Bonanza (VIFF 01) portrayed the vivid world of Argentinean wildlife poachers, has created a more subtle document: his character study of the titular ethnographer, John Palmer, is unexpectedly moving and as thoughtful and low-key as its protagonist, a British scholar who went from studying the Wichí to advocating for them and living with them. He is now married to a Wichí woman and father to half-Wichí children who face a future full of dislocation and uncertainty. Like the people who have adopted him, he bears an air of resigned determination as he attempts to halt, or at least delay, the forces arrayed against them.