During the last 18 years, since 1993 when the democratically elected president Fernando Collor de Mello was impeached, the cinema of the country famous for its soccer, samba and carnival has greatly flourished



One of the main reasons for the latest flourishing of Brazilian cinema lies in the heritage of the Cinema Nuevo movement of the 1960s, which was influenced by Italian neorealism and the French New wave, and whose representatives are some of the most significant filmmakers of the second half of the 20th century, such as the famous modernist Glauber Roche and his colleagues Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Ruy Guerra and Carlos Diegues. The other key reason is the activities of the agile production house Embrafilme, which was created during the Cinema Nuevo movement, and which during the 1970s and 1980s played a key role in shaping, directing and supporting Brazil’s national film production, and probably most importantly in internationally popularizing the acclaimed artists who came under suspicion during Melle’s regime as the messengers of a failed ideology and symbols of the past. Those artists include the ambitious Walter Salles, director of the road film Foreign Land (Terra Estrangera), who later directed the solid but nevertheless overrated drama Central Station, and the excellent Sergio Bianchi, “tropical Michael Haneke” who became famous with his existential drama A Causa Secreta, a story about social chaos in Brazil, the absence of communication and the social despair that audiences experience through the eyes of a group of actors of different social and ethnic origins.

The main characteristic of contemporary Brazilian film is a well thought out, mostly complete, more or less humorous and/or subversive interpretation of intriguing and anxious emotional, existential, social and political topics with the strong support of interesting and multifaceted characters and their complex relationships. We are especially talking about the internationally acclaimed directors Fernando Meirelles and José Padilha, authors of the fascinating documentary-inspired social crime dramas City of God and Elite Squad; about such talented artists as Paulo Caldas and Lírio Ferreira; the potent and extremely interesting authors José Araújo and Djalma Limongi Batista; the still active veteran Carlos Diegues - or Guilherme de Almeida Prado, who very effectively combined melodrama with musical in his film Hora Mágica, an adaptation of Julio Cortázar’s short story. All the aforementioned filmmakers more or less suggestively interpret provocative themes and impinge upon darker and more intriguing intimate, social and political problems, often illustrating them with explicit violence and, apart from being ironic and using dark humor, mostly stay away from benign and escapist plots, or from coloring Brazilian reality in pastels and idyllic colors.

This year’s program of contemporary Brazilian film begins with Meirelles’ feature film Blindness, based on the novel by the Nobel Prize winning author José Saramago. It is a fantastic existential drama with elements of thriller and horror and an impressive allegorical story about an epidemic of blindness that causes the ruin of all civilization and a complete loss of humanity. Saramago and Meirelles use blindness as a catalyst for creating a parabola of the apocalyptic nature of human society when facing a crisis, of that which is atavistic and “beastly” in humans, as well as of the estrangement of individuals and their (in)abilities to survive and live in a community. The writer’s profoundly pessimistic novel was regarded as very demanding and completely inapt for a film adaptation, which was further affirmed by the highly esthetic and atmospheric but nevertheless pretentious Meirelles film.

The prize-winning humorous existential drama Juventude (Juventude), based on the play Ceia dos Cardeais by Júlio Dantas, was directed by the experienced Domingos Oliveira, also a veteran with more than four decades of filmmaking. It was made on a small budget and shot in one location using a digital camera. Juventude is a nostalgic story about a meeting of three old friends at the age of eighty. Oliveira plays one of the three man characters, the theatre director Antonio who spends a weekend with the cardiologist Ulisses in the luxurious house of their entrepreneur friend David. They reminisce about their childhoods, youth, (un)realized loves and dreams and relive the traumas of their current existential crisis, broken marriages and bad relationships with their children. The result is an unpretentious whole whose charm lies in spontaneity, emotional realism and sometimes improvisation.

The debutant Paulo Pons directed the conventional and not entirely convincing thriller drama Retribution (Vingança), a story about a rape that plays with the audience’s expectations, protagonists’ characteristics and their relationships. Romantic comedy Apenas o Fim describes all aspects of love through a story about the end of a love affair in a rather formulaic and dry but unquestionably charming manner. Also a romantic comedy, Once Upon a Time in Rio (A mulher de meu Amigo) by Cláudio Torres offers a clichéd and uninventive love story about a foursome composed of two couples who are best friends. (Josip Grozdanić)