Felipe Bragança
Obsessed with questions about his past, a bankrupt, white Brazilian filmmaker undertakes an epic journey from Brazil to Mozambique and Portugal. This melancholic fable mixes animation, live-action, voice-overs, genres, and continents to explore Brazil's colonial past.
Ana, a Portuguese actress, dives into Brazil's current atmosphere of identity and political crisis while trying to portray in a feature film the colourful life of famous singer and actress Carmen Miranda, who helped define Brazil's identity.
The border between Brazil and Paraguay: living on opposite sides of a big river, Brazilian boy Joca falls in love with indigenous-Paraguayan girl Basano. A magical tale of impossible love and adventure in this land full of memories of colonial wars and indigenous genocide.
“They see black man and think it`s a lion.” Documentary images and staged scenes are mixed to tell the memories and dreams of three war refugees living in a square in Berlin downtown.
Donato fails in his attempt to save a drowning man, and meets one of the man's friends. He decides to start his life over, but pieces of his past keep coming after him.
A simple Portuguese-Brazilian song. Fernando spends his time in Porto in the neighborhood of Fontainhas between a small house and a local café. A parrot reaches him from Brazil, which evokes paradise in his imagination. This gives rise to a Portuguese-Brazilian correspondence. A game of mirrorings develops over the exchange of letters between the two friends, in which ideas of each other’s country are reflected.
Zahy Guajajara, 23, is one of the indigenous leaders of a village created next to Maracanã, in the old Museu do Índio, in Rio de Janeiro, threatened with demolition. In this video created with four hands with Felipe Bragança, Zahy, a shaman and storyteller from his village, takes a new look at the place where he lived and resisted.
José Henrique Fonseca crafts an ambitious and long overdue homage to a central icon in Brazil’s 20th century history. Reminiscent of film noir classics, the biopic tells the glorious and tragic story of the legendary football striker Heleno de Freitas. The sumptuous black and white cinematography reflects the chic life of Rio de Janeiro in the 1940s as it fell under the spell of sports royalty. Heleno was no doubt one of the most popular players of his time for his bravura in the field and magnificent goal-scoring that lead the Botafogo team to the top and himself into a vicious downward spiral.
An experimental collective film lasting little more than an hour, compiled from 10 episodes by a total of 14 different young Brazilian filmmakers. The project was an initiative of the directing duo Felipe Bragança and Marina Meliande, who sent a ‘letter of concern’ to inspire the participants. In it, a 16-year-old girl wrote about her dreams, which have been translated by the directors into films about love, youth and the possibilities of cinema.
Joy is a fable about courage and youth. It tells the story of Luiza, 16 year old girl, who can not stand to hear about the end of the world… On a Christmas night, his cousin John is mysteriously shot in a street in the Lowlands and disappears into the night. Weeks later, while Luiza spends days alone in the apartment where he lives with his mother in Rio de Janeiro, a mysterious visitor comes knocking on your door: John, as a ghost, asking to hide there.
Two girls star in this musical drama amazing road! A van, a beach, a reed, very homesick, girls in flower perched at gas stations… and a little music.
In northern Brazil, Hermila patiently waits for her husband. However, he has abandoned her. Sexy, restless and resolute, she raffles off "a night in paradise" with herself. This beautifully-shot portrait doesn't shy away from the burdens of a young scarred woman, but it also celebrates her courage to live according to her own rules.
They met in the summer, in the rain. A film of carnival and silence. His Name (The Clown) is a surface film – based on newspaper news and daily life in large Brazilian cities, but without any direct link to any real event. Violence, joy and silence are worked on in the film in order to build a space where characters are as real as they are intangible – in a narrative of short marked sequences, in which a whirlwind of events mixes with a stitching of fragments and gaps: He is a quiet man and divides his time between his violent work in downtown Rio de Janeiro and his boarding house in Catumbi. She is the girl who appears in his life, on a rainy afternoon – and soon things start to go by very quickly. A film of carnival and silence, of love and anger – of apathy and will. A chronicle of the conflicts and festivities of a city sewn between hills, forests and cement. A tribute to Rio, perhaps?
Who was it that caught me inside a drop of water? Mario Quintana
