09/07/2026
ELEPHANTS & SQUIRRELS will be presented at the 79th Locarno Film Festival 🐆💛!
ELEPHANTS & SQUIRRELS will be presented at the 79th Locarno Film Festival 🐆💛! We're honoured to be part of the Panorama Suisse section, which showcases and celebrates contemporary Swiss cinema 🇨🇭🎬
📍Friday, August 14th, 11.00am, FEVI, with Q&A
At the request of an Indigenous Adivasi community, the Sri Lankan artist Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige is campaigning for the repatriation of colonial cultural artifacts and human remains held at two museums in Basel. A museum director from Sri Lanka had already called for their return in the 1970s, but Switzerland refused. Between archives, authorities and closed museum doors, a discourse unfolds on ownership, memory and historical responsibility – while the Wanniyala-Aththo community awaits the return of the human remains of their ancestors.
«[...] The film's unsettling clarity exposes the deep colonial entanglements of a nation that claims neutrality while benefiting from empire, ultimately serving as a powerful reflection on the ethics of curation and the necessity of historical healing.» Gugi Gumilang, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival
Gregor Brändli SWISS FILMS Solothurner Filmtage - Journées de Soleure - Giornate di Soletta Filmotor
