Eami, the third feature film by Paz Encina, will represent Paraguay in the competition for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards, the country announced on Tuesday. The film had its world premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival in January, where it won the Tiger Award for Best Film.
Encina has made a dreamy, magic-realist film about a five-year-old girl called Eami, following the filmmaker’s immersion in indigenous mythologies of the Paraguayan Chaco. After the girl’s village is destroyed and her community disintegrates, Eami wanders the rainforest. She will have to live outside the rainforest, just like the coñone (literally: ‘the insensitive’). Embodying Asojá, the bird-god-woman, Eami falls into trance in which she walks slowly and stunned through her beloved forest as she prepares to leave it forever. Encina turns her final wander into an experience for all the senses, with enchanting images and a powerful sound mix.
Eami becomes the sixth Paraguayan submission to the Oscars since the country first entered a candidate in 2015.
