remains

Over the course of 10 years, REMAINS follows Danish ancient DNA researcher and Professor Eske Willerslev in his pursuit of DNA data from the most contested ancient skeletons in North America: From the bones of a small boy hidden in the safe of a home in Montana; the legal battle for the remains of the 9.500-year-old Kennewick Man, to the 10.600-year Spirit Cave Mummy in Nevada. The film follows the strategic career ambitions of a driven scientist, but also his growing understanding of the Native tribes’ fight for repatriation and reburial of their ancestors. It is a journey that leads the professor to discover not only the ancestry of Native Americans but also the bias in his own reading of the data, that gets him enrolled in the Crow Tribe and gives him a terrifying spiritual experience. REMAINS invites us into a world of science full of contradictions and ethical dilemmas, in which politics, ethics, spirituality and personal ambitions are closely intertwined.