Elephants & Squirrels

Gregor Brändli, doc., 114 min., CH 2025

Winner Silver Dove Award, DOK Leipzig, Int. Competition, 2025
Best Documentary, Global Perspectives Film Award, 2026
IDFA, Best of Fests, 2025
Hong Kong Int. Film Festival, Documentary Competition, 2026
Le FIFA, Int. Competition, 2026
Hot Docs Toronto, Artscapes, 2026
Salem Film Fest, Massachussets, 2026
InScience Film Festival, InSight Competition, 2026
Nominated for Prix de Soleure, Solothurn Film Festival, 2026
FIFDH Genève, Focus Competition, 2026
Bolzano Film Festival, RealeNonReale, 2026
Jean Rouch International Film Festival, Paris, International Competition, 2026
Encounters South African Int. Documentary Festival, 2026

At the request of an Indigenous Adivasi community, the Sri Lankan artist Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige is campaigning for the repatriation of colonial cultural artefacts and human remains held at two museums in Basel. A museum director from Sri Lanka had already called for their return in the 1970s, but Switzerland refused. Between archives, authorities and closed museum doors, a discourse unfolds on ownership, memory and historical responsibility – while the Wanniyala-Aththo community awaits the return of the human remains of their ancestors.

«[…] The film’s unsettling clarity exposes the deep colonial entanglements of a nation that claims neutrality while benefiting from empire, ultimately serving as a powerful reflection on the ethics of curation and the necessity of historical healing.» Gugi Gumilang, Hot Docs

The film’s official website