Thinking Like A Mountain

$345.00

"The carefully conducted, intensive discussions with the indigenous inhabitants are very often about the beauty and grace of nature." – Spielfilm

"The brilliant pictures show the beauty of the mountains and their inhabitants, with their long, dark hair and conical white knitted hats: an old people who are exposed to the constraints of the modern world, but do not surrender to them without resistance." – Kunst und Film

"[Thinking Like a Mountain] is also an invitation to pause again, to be attentive, to listen to other people, to listen to nature." – Film Rezensionen

Visions du Réel
Cartagena International Film Festival
Dokfest Munich

This intimate portrait of the Arhuaco tribe, an indigenous people living in a remote part of Colombia, reveals the struggles of the community to maintain its cultural identity in the face of an encroaching modern society and violent political turmoil.

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, located in the northeast of Colombia, is the world’s highest coastal mountain range. It’s also the home of four autochthonous communities who have been fighting to preserve their ancient way of life as Western civilization pushes in on all sides. One of these groups is the Arhuaco people, whose most recent troubles started early in the 20th century when Capuchin monks and farmers invaded their territory. Thus began a series of indignities which included losing sacred ancestral land, being forbidden from speaking their own language, being forced to convert to Christianity, and even working as slaves.

Thinking Like A Mountain follows the Arhuaco as they confront the challenges of the 21st century while holding onto the traditions of the past. They helplessly witness the coal mining that strips away their mountain’s resources, which are especially important to a people who see themselves as protectors of their immediate environment. When tourists visit their territory, they perform tribal ceremonies and pose for photographs, hoping to raise money to buy back land that was stolen from them. And having spent much of the 1990’s caught in the crossfire between the Colombian government and paramilitary groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), the Arhuaco now see some of their people who left to fight twenty years earlier return. These and other vignettes converge to portray a community undaunted and quietly resilient in the face of the adversity that surrounds them and their ancestral home, a spectacular landscape of mist, stone, and lush flora, set high in the mountains.

91 Minutes | Central American Indian languages with English subtitles.

Directed by Alexander Hick

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