IndiFest – Barcelona’s Indigenous Film Festival is dedicating its 17th edition to “Ancestral Intelligences,” a concept that can help reflect on the knowledge and practices of Indigenous peoples in the face of global challenges in the present and future.

“Intelligences” in the plural, because collective and diverse intelligences are needed to address crises, beyond algorithms, brilliant minds, or expert panels. Indigenous epistemologies, traditional ecological knowledge, and community-based organization are some of the collective alternatives and responses from Indigenous peoples to confront environmental, health, and social crises.

But while collective, these intelligences are also ancestral: they grow from a deep connection to the land, from the legacy of the elders, and from oral tradition. This bond is not about nostalgia for the past or fundamentalism, but rather a relationship built on lived experiences and emotions that is continuously renewed and strengthened.

Indigenous peoples—except for those who have chosen voluntary isolation (which is not always respected)—live every day alongside a globalized society with its technological shifts, economic fluctuations, environmental emergencies, and health crises. Faced with present and future uncertainties, and the difficult coexistence with the Western world, it seems that resilience lies in incorporating some of their tools. Technological and digital sovereignty is part of this process of engagement, which also serves as empowerment. But how should it be done? Is it feasible given the technological divide? How can the presence of marginalized languages be integrated into the digital world? Are traditional wisdoms compatible with the digital age? How can they coexist while protecting against cognitive extractivism, cultural appropriation, or biopiracy?

For all these reasons, ancestral intelligences are a form of resistance to the colonization of both the past and the present—in facts and historical reconstruction. They also resist the colonization of the future, against the reductionist and dismal narratives that only imagine the end of the world or unreachable technological miracles, overlooking the ways of life, thinking, and imagining of thousands of Indigenous cultures.

This year’s film selection seeks to explore this theme while maintaining the diverse categories that define the festival. The selection includes various themes: stories of resistance, the defense of rights, the struggle of Indigenous women, ancestral sexual diversities, the protection of water and territory, among others.

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