What makes Brazilian-Latina director Juliana Curi stand out — in addition to a keen instinct for a story and an eye on how to frame it — is the democratic way in which she approaches the subject matter at hand. In her director’s statement for her latest documentary UÝRA: The Rising Forest, Curi states her priority in making the film’s production practices “as horizontal as possible.” When asked to expand on her perspective, in our interview ahead of the movie’s world premiere at Frameline Film Festival 2022, Curi says that she is “one piece of the puzzle of artists that come together from different fields of study to bring this story to life.” She expresses the inherent impossibility of one person building a singular vision about a story, particularly one like UÝRA, which sits at the intersection of LGBTQ+ rights, Indigenous rights, and environmentalism.
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Indeed, education is perhaps Curi’s biggest take away from her journey in making UÝRA: The Rising Forest. Not only did the film help her connect with her own cultural identity – “I have a story that’s similar to Uýra: my grandmother and great-grandmother were Indigenous, but I never found my [ancestry].” — but it also helped her understand the importance of knowledge. “I grew up with this feeling that Brazil is a place of epistemicide, which is the killing of knowledge,” she says. “I think the most important thing in Uýra’s message for me [is] that we are all connected by one cause, which is the preservation of life, and how the forest connects us all.”
UÝRA: The Rising Forest had its in-person premiere at Frameline on June 22. Tickets for streaming access of the film during the rest of the festival’s run (from June 24 to 30) and other information are available on Frameline’s website.
