Rio's criminal underworld is run by an unexpected boss: a femme Queen with a taste for power and violence. But heavy lies the crown: what Queen can trust her subjects, however fabulous? When she sets up a stoolie to take the fall for her boy, a plot against Her Majesty arises!
Rio de Janeiro, 2012. 30 year-old Karine, 8 months pregnant, loses her husband in a senseless murder. She and her brother almost die, but are saved by Pastor Naldo, an evangelical pastor from the Church of Eden. Karine carries within her the conflict of salvation via the church or via the birth of...
Santamaria and Urtigo are two bandits on the run, one is white, the other black. Santamaria is a mystical visionary and believes in the imminent coming of a purifying angel. Urtiga, his inseparable companion, is a simple-minded and ingenious man who follows Santamaria around and participates in the...
In his film Rua Aperana 52 Júlio Bressane describes the invention of a landscape, the topology of a corner of Rio de Janeiro. The film consists of a series of photographs taken between 1909 and 1955 by, among others, Bressane's parents at and around the address used as a title. These are...
The old servant and chronicler Dom Sabas tells how his desolate South American town is the scene of a ruthless power struggle. The landowning Assis family, reduced to a widow and son, tries to hold out against the young, despotic mayor. No less effective then actions are anonymous rumors and...
Sentimental Education centers on the unique relationship between Áurea, a lonely 40 year old teacher, and a young man she has just met by chance – one of these encounters which mythology and literature are full of. A delicate soul who finds itself attracted to a beauty that seems to demand,...
"Seven women on motorcycles, through Via Dutra, go to the Baixada Fluminense, a microcosm of Brazil. Diving into the memory and questioning the behavior imposed on women, they seek to rescue the strength of the feminine. The new woman, born in the Brazilian land, incorporates the Amazons and Santa...
Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ The Disinterested Killer Bill Harrigan, Garoto follows a young couple who find themselves in an enchanted place where they experience an amorous and spiritual adventure.
Young and rich executive living in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, leaves his wife and kids behind and goes to Porto Seguro, Bahia, to try and live as a fisherman with his mistress.
A meditation and a reverie upon a city at once real and imagined. Conceptualized as a documentary on the ZUP buildings in France, the film has instead found form as poetic & expansive confrontation with the psychogeography of a contemporary Europe in crisis. A requiem for a city dreamt between its...
A dysfunctional family, composed of a prostitute and two gay men, one strong and the other fragile and stupid, lives a routine life in Rio de Janeiro. When the slut threatens the other two to stop supporting them, they decide to find an odalisque as an alternative to keep their easy life.
An extended research tour of US university film programs introduced dos Santos to the American avant-garde filmmakers, among them Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage, who would directly inspire his formally radical adaptation of an allegorical short story about adultery and colonialism by Guilherme de...
A delicate and tenacious writer, widowed three years ago, engages in frequent conversations with a parrot. However, she’s always observed by a large portion of raw meat.
Apiyemiyekî? addresses the genocide of the Waimiri-Atroari people in 1970s, when during the Brazilian dictatorship indigenous lands in the mid-west were invaded for the construction of the national road BR-174 and the installation of a mining company. Illustrations about the period, created by the...
In a spellbinding, textural blend of 16mm and HD video, Ana Vaz refracts the colonial history of Brazil and Portugal through objects, gestures, and contemporary customs.
