People's Planet Project at
Uncover Festival
March 20, 2026
Last March 13th, we had the opportunity to attend the second edition of Uncover Festival in Guimarães, Portugal - an event dedicated to looking beyond the image and questioning what lies beneath and around it. From March 12th to 15th, 2026, the festival brought together four days of masterclasses, workshops, performances, and participatory initiatives, inviting audiences to collectively explore new ways of seeing and understanding the world.
On March 13th, People’s Planet Project joined the festival as part of the panel Tecnologia a favor da resistência ambiental, where our founder, Abdel Mandili, explored how technology can become a tool for environmental resistance. Rooted in an Indigenous-led approach, People’s Planet Project works to equip communities with filmmaking and geospatial tools, enabling them to document their territories, tell their own stories, and generate evidence to defend their lands.
In a time marked by rising populism and the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence - where machines increasingly learn to see, interpret, and even shape perception for us - spaces like Uncover feel more urgent than ever. Images are no longer neutral; they construct narratives, influence realities, and define whose stories are told. This makes it essential to question not only how we see, but who is given the tools to create those visions. For communities on the frontlines of climate change and deforestation, access to storytelling and technology is not just creative - it is political.
Being part of Uncover was an opportunity to situate this work within a broader cultural and technological conversation - one that challenges dominant narratives and reclaims the power of image-making. It reaffirmed a simple but urgent idea: when communities most affected by environmental destruction hold the tools to represent themselves, storytelling becomes a form of resistance.
In the interview, Abdel Mandili shared his perspective on the role of technology in amplifying Indigenous voices and why rethinking how - and by whom - images are created is essential in the fight for environmental and social justice.
