Damiana Kryygi Trailer (2016)

Trailer for Damiana Kryygi.

In 1896, in a dense Paraguayan jungle, a three-year-old Aché girl survives the brutal murder of her family by colonizers. Baptizing her Damiana, her captors force her into domestic slavery where she grows up under horrid and abusive conditions. Reaching puberty, she's accused of being sexually promiscuous and is sent to a mental institution where she succumbs to tuberculosis at the age of 14. Damiana's body is sent to Argentina's La Plata Natural History Museum, where it becomes an object of scientific study. One hundred years later her remains are discovered in the museum's archives, and we follow her Aché community in their unwavering efforts to reclaim her remains and lay her to rest on ancestral land. This emotionally powerful film sheds much needed light on the violence of colonialism, calling into question museum ethics as Indigenous communities fight to reclaim the bodies of their ancestors.