On Suspicion: Zokunentu

(Bajo sospecha: Zokunentu)

Daniel Díaz Oyarzún / Chile / 2020 / 67 min
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  • Havana Film Festival in NY

    Special Mention

  • Hot Docs

  • ANTOFACINE Film Festival

    Winner Best Music

  • International First Peoples’ Festival

  • La Serena Film Festival

  • SANFIC Santiago International Film Festival

  • FICVIÑA Film Festival

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Synopsis

Mapuche and Spanish with English subtitles

With Bernardo Oyarzún

Filmmaker Daniel Díaz’s life takes a pivotal turn following the racial profiling and wrongful arrest of his uncle, Bernardo Oyarzún, a renowned Mapuche visual artist. This personal and painful event compels Díaz to explore the intergenerational impact of systemic racism, the loss of indigenous identity, and the erasure of cultural heritage.

Blending historical reckoning with personal storytelling, the documentary incorporates Mapuche language and worldview as acts of cultural reclamation and resistance. Through poignant reflections and bold aesthetics, Díaz gives voice to a criminalized and marginalized identity, reframing it as a source of strength and dignity. His work offers a compelling contribution to conversations on Indigenous rights, cultural memory, and the politics of representation, making this film an essential exploration of racial and social justice in a rapidly changing Chile.

Related Subjects
About the Director

Daniel Díaz Oyarzún is a filmmaker, writer, and researcher dedicated to exploring the intersections of heritage, narrative, and language. With a degree in Filmmaking from Universidad de Chile and a Master’s in Scriptwriting from Universidad Finis Terrae, Díaz combines his expertise in storytelling with a deep commitment to cultural revitalization.

For the past five years, he has studied Mapuzugun, the language of the Mapuche people, which has shaped his research on the documentary genre as a tool for historical inquiry and indigenous language preservation. As the founder and partner at Pikun Films, Díaz develops projects that foreground indigenous voices and cultural recovery.

His debut feature-length documentary, On Suspicion: Zokunentu, is the first to be narrated entirely in Mapuzugun, offering a profound exploration of identity, resistance, and resilience within the Mapuche community.

Press

“The film is a journey through the works of the celebrated Mapuche visual artist Bernardo Oyarzún from Daniel Díaz’s perspective, his nephew, who proposes a reflection on identity, spirituality, territory and racial justice in contemporary Chile.” – Heidy M., Hye's Musings

Notes on the Film

“My grandfather Reimberto Oyarzún was arrested in 1993 accused of stealing jewelry from the house where he worked. The police beat and tortured him. My family appealed to a HR defense corporation to release him. When the ‘victim’ confessed to having found the jewelry, it all came to nothing.

Four years later, my uncle Bernardo Oyarzún was arrested on suspicion and confronted with the victims of an assault. Like my grandfather, he was also innocent. This episode prompted Bernardo to reflect on his indigenous appearance and social status: it was no coincidence that our family had already experienced injustices of this kind. He attended psychological therapy where he realized that art was the best way to deal with the panic he felt. Thus, was born Bajo Sospecha, a work where he portrayed himself as a delinquent, including the indigenous faces of our family.

Seeing myself photographed in front of Bernardo’s shocked eye, I decided to confront that suspicious, criminalized, and underestimated Mapuche identity that even my own family has avoided. For them, it is impossible to take up our past when the Mapuche surnames have been abandoned or changed since my great-grandparents. I don’t know well where I come from, I don’t have a territory or a worldview. I am suspicious of the certificate of ‘Mapuche indigenous quality’ that the Chilean state gave me to get scholarships and benefits, but I keep thinking about the humiliations that our people have lived, the pain we share.

Without a surname, territory, worldview, or customs, I decided that there is one thing they will not be able to take away from me. If we have a suspicious appearance, then let it have its own voice. I tell this story in the Mapuche language for the record that we do not forget, but rather we recover our dignity.”

– Daniel Díaz, Director

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