Apiyemiyekî? explores Brazilian educator Egydio Schwade's ambitious efforts to record the memories of the Waimiri-Atroari, a tribe native to the Amazon who suffered acutely under Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1964-1985. In the 1970’s, the government appropriated their land to build the BR-174 highway while subjecting the tribe to chemical weapons and deadly exogenous diseases. Apiyemiyeki tells this history non-linearly, to haunting and hypnotic effect. The film pulls from Schwade’s corpus of over 3,000 drawings made by Waimari-Atroari, later used as forensic evidence of genocide in a governmental truth commission. Inspired by the pioneering educator Paulo Freire, Schwade emphasized the Waimari-Atroari’s “sovereignty” as learners while teaching them written language at their urging. Through stylistic innovations, Apiyemiyekî? conjures an atmosphere of dread amid unearthed memories. In superimposing the tribe’s drawings onto unstable black-and-white landscapes, set to a dissonant score, Apiyemiyekî? captures the fractured nature of traumatic memories.