An indigenous teenager falls ill when he resists tribal duties and his destiny as a shaman in João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora’s ethnographically sincere “The Dead and the Others.” Handsomely shot on 16mm to draw out the region’s warm organic tones, the film is an admirable, often fascinating fictionalized portrait of the Krahô people of Brazil’s north-central state of Tocantins and their fight to preserve traditions too easily watered-down by contact with the outside world.
A major problem however is that the directors, who don’t speak Krahô, had their nonprofessional performers improvise their lines, giving far more space to exposition than their amateur acting can bear.
Less dialogue and greater reliance on conveying information visually would have distinguished “The Dead” from other indigenous fiction, though Un Certain Regard’s special jury prize ensures a modest festival life.Fifteen-year-old Ihjãc (Henrique Ihjãc Krahô) hears his deceased
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