Uýra: The Rising Forest

The art of resistance lives and breathes – colourful, striking, riveting – through Uýra, a trans and Indigenous performance activist. Travelling through the Brazilian Amazon, Uýra imparts the Indigenous youth she meets with the power to embrace how their queerness, Indigenous ancestry, and deep connection with the forest all intertwine. In the deadliest country in the world for environmental activists, trans and Indigenous people, Uýra plants the seeds of both fury and hope. Despite immeasurable violence, the forests and people of the Amazon sink their roots deep, strong, into their land.

Opening with a performance celebrating protest and ancestry by artist Saoirse Amira Anis.
After the film, dive into a hands-on workshop on protest art, led by visual artist Priscila Fróes.

Presented in collaboration with Scottish Queer International Film Festival.

Content notes

Contains discussion of structural racism, indigenous erasure and brief allusion to genocide. Use of transphobic and homophobic language.

Access notes:

Mainly bright images with explanatory dialogue throughout. Brief scenes with loud music and flashing lights towards the end of the film (00:45, 00:43).