Elephants & Squirrels
(Switzerland, 114 min.)
Dir. Gregor Brändli
Prod. Frank Matter
At the core of Gregor Brändli’s Elephants & Squirrels rests a singular hard-hitting question: Who truly owns history stolen by colonizers? The film follows Sri Lankan artist Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige’s protest for the return of Indigenous Adivasi artifacts and ancestral remains. The eponymous elephants and squirrels refer to the remains of these animals taken from Sri Lanka at the turn of the 20th century by Swiss naturalists, Paul and Fritz Sarasin, employing colonial violence in service of scientific progress. Arachchige, encouraged by the chieftain of the Indigenous Wanniyala-Aetto community, embarks on a journey to engage the museum board of directors and its employees, along with Indigenous communities in Sri Lanka and cultural historians to initiate the repatriation of these important objects.
Through Arachchige’s engagement with these stakeholders, the film engages in discussions of art, science, and Switzerland’s less-discussed identity as a colonial power. In doing so, Elephants & Squirrels examines the core-periphery relationship from a novel angle by privileging the importance and meaning of these artifacts for the direct descendants of the people to whom they belonged, as opposed to the cultural protectors located in museums. There is thus a central conflict that is presented to the audience involving the Sri Lankans led by Arachchige and several employees of the Natural History Museum and the Museum of Cultures in Basel, Switzerland. At the beginning of the film, we hear the museums claim these artifacts as property of Switzerland, citing preservation as the primary reason to warrant ownership of these relics. There was a concern regarding the precedent that such an act would set alongside the lack of resources available in Sri Lanka to ensure the preservation of these ancient articles with one museum employee claiming, “It is not that easy to give things back.”
The film’s dedication to the stories of the artifacts and the histories that they contain within them is reminiscent of Mati Diop’s surreal Dahomey (2024), where the knowledge of returning to their home country incites feelings of nostalgia, remembrance, and self-actualization within museum artifacts. Although Elephants & Squirrels retains its realism by disallowing a voice to the inanimate pieces, Arachchige informs the viewer of the rich history of these objects that were violently removed from Sri Lanka by the Sarasins. As the film cuts between Arachchige’s exploration of the objects in Swiss archives and her trek through Sri Lanka where she discusses her project with her family, members of the Indigenous community, and historians, the audience receives a layered portrait of the contrast between the origins of these articles and the foreign basements within which they now reside.
There is an exceptional sequence where Arachchige is allowed the opportunity to try on an Indigenous mask that the Sarasins brought to Switzerland. The film observes as she feels an energy emanating from the mask that could have never been experienced had it remained in a box. The film thus captures the complex relationship between preservation and purpose by not privileging a singular point of view in this discourse and rather documenting the story playing out, to show how cultural artifacts best serve present-day communities by allowing them to engage with the past.
Largely constructed around this dichotomous relationship, Elephants & Squirrels is its most engaging when these complexities related to art, culture, history, and preservation are offered to the viewer to think through. Hearing from the museum employees and directors offers a different perspective, as they attempt to uphold their cultural power without denying the colonial violence involved in their procurement of these objects. This frankness results in moments of relief, where the tricky situation the museums find themselves in is the grounds for some dry humour, including a moment when a director at one of the museums in Basel claims, “We have no idea what to do with the ancestors of others.” His joke emphasizes that beyond merely preserving the artifacts, the historians aren’t actually sure how these pieces are essential to Switzerland and its culture.
The film re-centres discussions of decolonization by highlighting the role of the colonizer in the process, arguing that while the colonized may rid themselves of the invader’s presence, the thief must return what was unjustly stolen from the originating nation. In this regard, the film functions as an exceptionally important document that understands the stakeholders in this relationship and is effective at involving and hearing from all of them.
However, standing at nearly two hours, the film does deviate from the central storyline by conjuring moments that are enjoyable but may end up bearing upon the viewer through journey. For example, a stretched-out sequence at Arachchige’s home in Sri Lanka observes as see interacts with her parents and discusses the events in Switzerland and their relationship with art and culture. These are endearing conversations that simultaneously reveal the humble beginnings that Arachchige started her journey from and how her parents have shaped her into the defiant artist that she’s become. However, these moments offer a significantly different tonality to the film’s investigative voice, effectively rupturing the narrative in a way that does not enhance the intended effect to lend the film an emotional arc. It almost appears as a film within a film, a procedural drama interrupted by a tender but misplaced homecoming that offers respite that one may not necessarily need..
While Arachchige’s homecoming mostly serves as a visually pleasing digression, Elephants & Squirrels nevertheless raises urgent questions as public discourse surrounding colonial thievery thickens, with people debating who must return what to whom. It also answers a few queries along the way, urging the viewer to re-think the problematic core-periphery relationship and question the role of countries beyond the usual suspects (the United Kingdom, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands) in perpetrating colonialism and colonial violence.
