Cinema

Elephants & Squirrels

FIFA

Elephants Squirrels STL 008 4 K 239 251010

Elephants & Squirrels follows Sri Lankan artist Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige in her quest to return ancestral remains and artifacts, held in a Swiss museum since the early 20th century, to the Wanniyala-Aetto community.

Mixing archives, interviews, and fieldwork in Switzerland and Sri Lanka, the film chronicles the long journey of establishing dialogue between a museum institution and a dispossessed community—a film about memory and the decolonization of collections.

Première nord-américaine

Compétition internationale - longs-métrages

In my generation, we learned at school that Switzerland had no colonies and was therefore not part of the colonialist system. However, due to my Brazilian family history—my grandmother was born in Brazil—I had certain doubts about this statement even as a child.

What role did neutral Switzerland play in colonialism, and how long can it hide behind the narrative that it merely had trade relations. Bernhard C. Schär's book Tropenliebe, which traces Basel's colonial past through the story of the two explorers Paul and Fritz Sarasin, captivated me. Schär turns the camera around and reconstructs the entire context in which images were created and journeys took place at that time. In this way, he makes gaps in the historical documentation visible. The Sarasins determined exactly what we find about them in the archives. Important parts of their estates have been “discarded due to illegibility,” as the Basel State Archive puts it. In love poems and aphorisms, they provide vague insights into their thinking. Paul Sarasin writes: “Innocent is the one who is completely convinced that he is acting innocently.” Even back then, the question of morality was a central theme for the cousins.

(...)

For me, it was clear from the outset that the film should rather ask questions than provide answers. When does a story begin, and when does it end? What does historical responsibility mean? While working on the film, I was inspired by M.C. Escher’s art, with its endless forms and movements, which show the importance of perspective and viewpoint in the search for truth.

We never had a clear plan. The film was made scene by scene, much of it in a dialogical process. Context and dialogue were central and more important than ready-made explanations. It quickly became clear that colonial history can never be told exclusively with European archive material. And that it was precisely in Sri Lanka that we were getting important answers to a long-overdue discourse. The film is an attempt to work together openly on narratives—to reveal gaps and, if possible, to also fill them.

- Gregor Brändli

Gregor Braendli

Born in 1986, Gregor Braendli is a filmmaker and photographer based in Basel, Switzerland. Since 2011, he has worked as an independent director and cinematographer on various documentary and narrative films, as well as interdisciplinary theater projects. He is a co-founder, writer, and performer with Theater Kollektiv Glück and a co-founder of the design studio Tristesse. His work focuses on cross-media film and theater projects that explore the fluid space between fiction and documentary. Elephants & Squirrels is his debut feature documentary film.

Biographical notes provided by the film production team 

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