Marcela Santos

Filmed in Amazonas in 2021, on Estrada Fantasma BR-319, Transamazônica BR-230 and in the real city of Realidade, “Curupira and the Machine of Destiny” documents the encounter in the present time between a curupira and the incarnate ghost of Iracema, a character in the movie “Iracema – an amazon sex”. Open as wounds during the civic-military dictatorship that entangled Brazil in the cries of order and progress, the asphalt rebars that crisscross the country were built, destroyed and are now drowning in a process of reconstruction. Warm ruins of an addicted future. In love, Iracema ghost sets off at the crossroads of the straight roads of the Amazon to find Curupira and avenge the future.

The construction of a community goes far beyond its erected walls and masonry bricks: it lies in the everyday invention of the commonplace, of life shared in its struggles and victories. Stemming from this premise, this debut feature film (by the directors of Na Missão com Kadu) documents the daily life of the urban occupation Eliana Silva, in the city of Belo Horizonte, on the eve of the 2018 elections. Seen from the inside, the hard-won territory becomes a protagonist as much as its residents, as they talk about political activism, companionship, love. Along with the records and personal testimonies is the (re)invention of subjectivity through art, going up against the totalizing narratives that reduce their existence to a newspaper news story.

One night seven years ago, Rafael came home after work and discovered that people he did not know had come looking for him. He immediately fled, without looking back. From that moment on, his life changed, as if that night had never ended. One evening, around an improvised fire near a factory, he decides to confide his journey to a stranger. Rafael’s intimate account meets the collective testimony of an entire nation oppressed by poverty, police repression and institutional corruption.

After having invaded liquid, gaseous and solid substances, a strange voice takes possession of a woman's body and for the first time experiences the taste of something truly human. Together, the voice and the body seek for belonging and an identity of their own as they question their roles within society.

The everyday life of a Belo Horizonte lower class neighborhood.