Sueli Maxakali

Sueli Maxakali is president of the Maxakali Association of Aldeia Verde. As a photographer, she participated in the following projects: Hitupmã’ax/Curar (Faculdade de Letras da UFMG e Literaterras, 2009), a bilingual book dedicated to health and healing practices from the perspective of the Tikumũ’ũn (Maxakali); Koxuk Xop Imagem (Beco do Azougue Editorial, 2009), with photographs of the Maxakali women about the rituals and daily life of Aldeia Verde; and Cantobrilho Tikumu’un: On the Edge of the Fertile Country (2010), an exhibition project and book on Tikumu estétican aesthetics. She co-directed the films Yãmiyhex: women-spirits (2019), Nuhu yãgmu yõg hãm: This Land is Ours (2020) and, more recently, the short film Payexop yãy tu nunãhã: Encontro de Pajés (2021). Her films Yãmiyhex and Nuhu yãgmu yõg hãm were awarded in 2019 and 2020 by the Tiradentes Film Festival, one of the main windows of Brazilian contemporary cinema across the country. She was a professor of the Transversal Training Program in Traditional Knowledge at UFMG, in 2016, 2017, and 2019. She is currently completing her studies in the Intercultural Training for Indigenous Educators (FIEI) course at the Faculty of Education of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).

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ABOUT Yõg ãtak: meu pai, Kaiowá [Yõg Ãtak — My father, Kaiowá]

Yõg Ãtak: meu pai, Kaiowá is a road movie that mixes personal and historical narratives as it follows the filmmaker and her sister on their search for their father. The journey connects the northeast of Minas Gerais, Brazil, where the filmmaker’s Maxakali people live, to the south of Mato Grosso do Sul, where her father’s people, the Guarani-Kaiowá, live.