Ancestral follows a giant anteater as it moves through a jungle, its silky coat contrasting with the rough shrubbery. A native to Brazil, and a national symbol for the country, our protagonist carries a small child on its back, eating ants from the ground with its long, tubular snout and picking at the dirt with its claws. The film refuses any particular temporality, as the creature evokes those that have roamed the earth for centuries. In titling the film Ancestral, Roque aligns the animal as a familial forebear—majestic, androgynous, gentle, and sculptural.

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