Sri Lankan Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige speaks inside a museum “red brown, light brown, and dirty chocolate brown”. The artist lists the different ways that European curators catalogued body parts from ‘different’ cultures, including the culture she’s from. This method of classification disregards the cultural mosaic of the countries that Europeans plundered like Sri Lanka. Elephants & Squirrels, from director Gregor Brändli, mostly succeeds in undoing the colonizers’ hoarder mentality through discussions with both sides. By writing ‘both sides,’ I mean that she talks to both Indigenous Sri Lankans as well as European curators.

History is a vital part of a community, an adage that’s probably obvious to the human subjects in here, whether they’re European or Sri Lankan. The climax in this documentary has Arachchige thoughtfully spending time with some of Sri Lanka’s Adavasi’s elders. Elephants & Squirrels shows them going to the Adavasi’s ancestral burial caves despite government bans. For what it’s worth, the documentary reinforces the idea of history being a dialogue, both holding its pieces. The elder knows where the ancestral lands are, while Arachchige tells him what the Europeans did there and how to undo it.

Sri Lankan voice are prominent in Elephants & Squirrels – I don’t have any nitpicks with the sentiment of this art documentary. My nitpicks here are really about its stylistic choices, coming as formless even with its atmospheric, punkish chapter breaks. The Sri Lankan footage also feels too raw and unfinished but I guess that’s probably better than manipulative hand holding. An Adviasi content creator repeats what Europeans say about them – “This is a developing country,” exposing condescension from colonizers. All the Adivasi want are their ancestral remains and other objects back because their choices towards what to do with those objects are just as valid.