Zahy Tentehar Guajajara

Engaging in strategies of worldbuilding, YWY, Visions combines sci-fi elements with Amerindian cosmologies to contest a linear claim on the future, offering instead a clash of many worlds and visions in between Indigenous and white perspectives. In doing so, it explores how artistic expressions might both acknowledge historical legacies and present visions of futures beyond dystopia.

Set in a present-future, YWY, an indigenous android, talks with a GMO corn crop in the agricultural interior of Brazil. In a moment of intimacy, the woman, whom we come to understand is a field worker, and the plants talk about bodily rights, infertility, labor, and monocrops. As a human, the spectator is unable to hear the voice of the corn plants, perceiving the dialogue as a weird monologue. The film’s script is inspired by the writing of Brazilian author João Guimarães Rosa, in which dialogues are often expressed through the voice of a single person rather than two or more.

Damião, a young black priest, settles in a village of European immigrants, tobacco farmers in southern Brazil. Received with disdain, Damião discovers that sinister forces have taken root in the town.