Brazil

The documentary rebuilds the life of the brazilian architect João Batista Vilanova Artigas. His relatives, friends, students and six of his major works tell the history of this iconic latinamerican modernist.Read More »

From the makers of “FantastiCozzi”, a new documentary about the life and career of controversial Italian director Ruggero Deodato.Read More »

Quote:
Starting with the screening of O Mandarim in 1996, Júlio Bressane became a regular at IFFR — one of its patron saints, one could even say, as many of his films were selected for later editions. In 2000, the festival honoured the cinema marginal paragon with one of the first comprehensive retrospectives on his work outside his native Brazil. It is, thus, more than fitting that Bressane’s extensive reflection on his six decades of filmmaking, The Long Voyage of the Yellow Bus, done in tandem with Rodrigo Lima, is one of IFFR 2023’s centrepieces!Read More »

To escape past traumas, a truck driver John decides to leave his hometown behind and travel cross the country. Alone and lonely he drives all over Brazil until John discovers hiding in his truck a motherless boy looking for his father. Reluctantly, John agrees to take the boy to the nearest town and, during the trip, he finally finds the courage to face his past.Read More »

Fragments of an endless night, Robert and Teresa meet and get to know each other, and get separate by the force of oppression and the threat of death and disappearance that continually creeps in.Read More »

Synopsis
Two lives cross in New York. Lamis, a Lebanese woman, has just moved to the city and describes her impressions while the Brazilian man Wilson has already lived there for 10 years. We never see them on the screen, but their relationship is described in poetic Arabic and Portuguese voice-overs, which contrast starkly with the images, shot in New York, Berlin and Brazil. In this way, the film speaks literally to the imagination: the events take place between what we see and what we hear. This hybrid form of documentary, fiction, travelogue and letters makes this ‘film diary’ reminiscent of News from Home (1977) by Chantal Akerman. Whereas Akerman brings together two different worlds based on letters from her mother in Belgium and images of New York, While We Are Here adds macro and geopolitical issues, such as globalisation and migration, to this approach. The main thread remains intimate and human: desire, love, fear and memories.—International Film Festival RotterdamRead More »

Synopsis
Just released from prison, Léa (Léa Alves Silva) returns home to the Brasilia favela of Sol Nascente and joins up with her half-sister Chitara (Joana Darc Furtado), the fearless leader of an all-female gang that steals and refines oil from underground pipes and sells gasoline to a clandestine network of motorcyclists. Living in constant opposition to Jair Bolsonaro’s fiercely authoritarian and militarized government, Chitara’s women claim the streets for themselves as a declaration of radical political resistance on behalf of ex-cons and the oppressed.Read More »

In the northeastern region of Brazil, during the 16th and 17th centuries, a group of enslaved individuals from a sugarcane plantation plan a escape to the Palmares Quilombo, a community of escaped Black slaves located in the Serra da Barriga. Among them is a young man named Ganga Zumba (Antonio Pitanga), who would later become the leader of that revolutionary republic, the first of its kind in all of the Americas.Read More »

Synopsis
While facing criminal charges, Pedro must grapple with his sister’s sudden decision to move away and leave him behind. Alone in the darkness of his bedroom, he dances covered in neon paint, while thousands of strangers watch him via webcam.Read More »