Let us address the iceberg in the ocean: most of us who do serious work with cinema do not necessarily consider ecocriticism as an entry point. This is especially true with Latin American film studies – which might be considered unusual, given how much emphasis we place on imagery of the landscape. I will admit that these ideas/theorists/theories were completely unfamiliar to me and therefore uncomfortable. And that, indeed, is Guzmán’s – and Holtmeier’s – point.

This discomfort exposes the ongoing effects of colonial and neocolonial perspectives in film study; Holtmeier’s work here makes moves to correct these measures through practice as he brings together indigenous theorists to an impressive documentary that pushes its own boundaries of the local, the global, the cosmic. I am reminded of the 2006 Peruvian fictional film Madeinusa, directed by Claudia Llosa, where the demise of the film’s only white character comes as a shock only because the film has originally asked us to align with a marginalized perspective – one that is young, female and indigenous – and we as viewers tend to reject that for one that is established, male and hegemonic. Holtmeier’s essay – particularly when the cosmovisions interrelate images on Selk’nam bodies with the actual constellations – also recalls segments within Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 experimental epic Koyaanisqatsi, whose very title references native perspectives on 'life out of balance'. Holtmeier demonstrates how these perspective are not just primary, but pro-active and plots out the ways in which Guzmán’s film can teach about this world.