In this audacious debut feature, João Paulo Miranda Maria conjures a surreal vision of the racial and social rifts in modern day Brazil, captured with dreamlike images steeped in traditional Brazilian folklore.

Cinema Novo icon Antônio Pitanga stars as Cristovam, an Indigenous Black man from the rural North who moves to an industrialized Southern town populated by the descendants of Austrian expats to work in a milk factory. Over three decades later, he is now lost in a decadent community and being told that he must take a wage cut, despite his loyalty to the company, he finds refuge in an abandoned home where he discovers artifacts reminiscent of his past.

As Cristovam rediscovers his roots, he comes to the realization that nothing has changed, and the attacks that he continues to endure in the community, both mental and physical, awaken in him a legacy of abuse carried down for centuries. Cristovam embodies the experience of the unwanted Other, the racialized body that can be mocked, tormented, and forgotten, encountering endless obstacles and intrusions thwarting the life that he is entitled to live. In the face of their virulent racism, Cristovam becomes increasingly estranged from the white world, and when he discovers an abandoned house filled with objects reminding him of his origins, it triggers a spiritual and physical metamorphosis.

Screened in Portuguese and German with English subtitles.

João Paulo Miranda Maria |  Brazil/France  |  2020  |  93 minutes