Enraged Pigs

The Kuikuro tribe have a story. A young man returns, shocked - "[he] thought the men were fishing, they transformed into furious pigs". This is that story.

This is something amazing. Opening with an evocation of a frog, moving through chanting, dancing, singing, a throwing of leaves and hysterical laughter, brandishing things that might be spears, gesturing with gourds. Is the film a re-telling or a document of the re-telling? There's an authenticity here that can't quite be touched - from the hut with its unfinished weave, the footballers in the background, the red and black of face paint and the story itself. It isn't mime and it isn't documentary, and it isn't theatre, and it isn't something else.

At Glasgow's 2013 Short Film Festival it won the International Jury Prize, and praise for "challenging what film is and can do". It's easy to agree, and also with their commendation for its "very precise cinematic skills and storytelling". Isabel Penoni and Leonardo Sette have made something striking. Appearing at the festival on the big screen through a combination of Skype and digital projection, Sette described the film as a "message in a bottle".

Perfectly contained, the contrast between human concerns and a cultural expression that's at once alien and untranslateable and immediately recognisable is stunning. At the end one is left trying to reconcile the story that we've seen with what we have understood of it. The jury noted that when [short film] "is strongest it is not a short version of a feature but something unique", and Eye For Film agrees - Enraged Pigs is odd, even baffling, but in ten minutes it manages something distinct, amazing, hypnotic.