Helena Ignez

Nosferatu arrives in a town escaping from Van Helsing. He brings not only his curse, but ghosts from his past. In this escape, he dives into a macabre dance searching for an actress and faces the horror of eternity and the pain of an endless existence.

In 1965, a year after the military coup in Brazil, an oasis of freedom opened in the country's capital. The Brasília Film Festival: a landmark of cultural and political resistance. Its story is that of Brazilian cinema itself.

No synopsis available yet.

In Esdras Baptista's film archives, kept at his home for decades, one can feel the fervor of those who believed in a new tomorrow. Filmed in Brazil in the early 1960s, in the heat of a libertarian political movement, the filmmaker's images materialize the incandescence of collective desires at the historic moment of their emergence. Utopia, though unattainable, is never a mere abstraction. A force that mobilizes actions and feelings, it constitutes the impetus necessary for human existence.

Short documentary film about Helena Ignez, the great actress of independent Brazilian cinema.

No synopsis available yet.

The raft man Manuel Jacaré was swallowed by the sea when Orson Welles was filming It's All True in 1942. The fact evokes memories of the dictatorship of the Estado Novo, of World War II, of Ceará fishermen's struggle for labor rights and housing in their traditional space - target of real estate speculation.

An authentically marginal cinema created in Catholic university in Brazil. One of the most intriguing and imaginative moments in modern cinema in the voice of some of its select conspirators—with Carlos Reichenbach at the lead—, and through the most razing flow of images that can possibly be conceived.

An experimental trip about Brazil after H.O.

After relocating to Tokyo, a Brazilian writer begins a new novel, provoked by her experiences in Japan and by one of the last scenes she witnessed in Rio de Janeiro: a female swimmer tearing up the horizon with powerful strokes in the wide, open sea. Those two women apparently share no connection, until their lives start to interfere in one another, strangely linked through the sea. Hannah, the writer, plunges into a journey of self-discovery in Japan, while Ana, the swimmer in Rio de Janeiro, oddly has her body transformed into some kind of inner Ocean.

Close to turning forty and away from his job as a librarian due to depression, Marcos needs to take care of Baby, his sister's pet dog. Isolated in an apartment in the city center, Marcos relies on the support of analyst Dr. Juliana R., who sees him in therapy sessions. Together, they look for ways to deal with the grief over the death of his ex-boyfriend, Pedro, and the arrival of a new love, Gabriel. Baby, a special hairless dog of Aztec origin, will redefine his relationship with the world of the dead and the living as well.

No synopsis available yet.

Benjamim Zambraia is a young drunk who wanders around the city and is sometimes treated with pampering and sometimes with a beating by his parents (Helena Ignez and Otávio Terceiro). As in Chico's book, the boy is obsessed with a big stone.

Cleo, a 43-year-old astronomer who is pregnant and emotionally fragile, is surprised by a visit from Nalu, her half-sister of Indigenous descent. The encounter reveals dark secrets and stirs up fragmented memories in Cleo, leading the two of them down a path of mysterious investigations.

For this behemoth, Bressane took his opera omnia and edited it in an order that first adheres to historical chronology but soon starts to move backwards and forward. The various pasts – the 60s, the 80s, the 2000s – comment on each other in a way that sheds light on Bressane’s themes and obsessions, which become increasingly apparent and finally, a whole idea of cinema reveals itself to the curious and patient viewer. Will Bressane, from now on, rework The Long Voyage of the Yellow Bus when he makes another film? Is this his latest beginning? Why not, for the eternally young master maverick seems to embark on a maiden voyage with each and every new film!

In 2018, Brazil’s 1988 Constitution turned thirty. Known as the Citizen Constitution, it was a landmark in the history of Brazil, the outcome of across-the-board engagement of society in its preparation. In Congress, the parliamentarians best known for their involvement in this initiative were names that are still familiar today in Brazil’s political history: Ulysses Guimarães, Teotônio Vilela, Tancredo Neves and Nelson Carneiro.

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New Rio, 2054 AD. The Order of Truth wreaks havoc on the streets, killing every being that has special powers. Renowned witch Dahlia is determined to beat the Order and assembles a clan of trans and queer people, each with their own supernatural talent. The fate of the city is in their hands.

70 years ago, a visionary management in education and culture as a political strategy for the dissemination and development of Bahia gave rise to an artistic vanguard that still impacts Brazilian culture today.

Topless muse in Rio de Janeiro, Ana Paula Nogueira uses the ban on bare breasts and her story to debate freedom and feminism in the city that exported thongs and which has the false reputation of being libertarian.

Guitarist Lanny Gordin was one of the fundamental characters in the transformation of Brazilian music from the 1960s onwards. He electrified Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Jards Macalé, among others. Lanny reveals his libertarian process of composition and current thinking, embarking on an unusual odyssey through China, his birthplace, and Brazil, the country where he lives.

Two years of research and visits to collections, cinematheques and museums; almost seventy interviews that generated 30 hours of recorded material; more than two hundred scanned photos and more than one hundred films watched. In total, more than a thousand hours of work were needed to prepare Brazilian Cinema in the 20th Century. The work is a fascinating journey through all the cinematic cycles that Brazil lived, from the pioneering Belle Époque, through the great studios like Atlântica and Cinédia, Cinema Novo, the urban comedies of the 70's, until the resumption in the late 90's. The documentary is unique, it gives the floor to who really wrote and lived this story intensely.

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.

Follows the story of Opinião, a theatre group created in 1964 during the early Brazilian dictatorship period to oppose the government through artistic performances. Considered the first left-wing response to the dictatorship, the group gathered now famous Brazilian artists such as Nara Leão, Maria Bethânia, João do Vale and Millôr Fernandes.

No synopsis available yet.

Isabel is a babysitter pregnant of her own child and can't wait to be a mother. Until she meets Joana.

The feature-length documentary Fakir portrays the success of fakirism in Brazil, Latin America and France. This circus art origin show is presented and analyzed through archives that reveals the success of these presentations with their pain resistance championships and the great public presence, including politicians and government officials. Fakir spans current footage from contemporary artists who keep this art alive in performances and shows.

Ugly, Me? is a film manifesto made from a workshop for actors called Characters in Search of a Movie, in 'La pa', 'Rio De Janeiro', extended to Paris and 'Kerala' (India). Multifaceted like a kaleidoscope, the characters appear in multi-screens scenes and sequences. The images were captured with different kinds of cameras and Ugly, Me? uses this sign of the variety imposed by independent production as language experimentation. Transposing the boundaries of style, Ugly, Me? navigates in a sea of metaphors, philosophical and musical politics, from Prince Harry to Heraclitus, going through a series of authors like Rimbaud, Brecht, Nietzsche, Bispo do Rosario and Eduardo Viveiros DE Castro, capturing a contradictory and original country.

Extracts is a short film with images from 1970 to 1972 in the cities of Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, London, Marrakech, Rabat and the Sahara Desert region. The images were filmed by Helena Ignez and Rogério Sganzerla in exile, in the "leaden years" of the military dictatorship.

Filmed over six years in four countries: Portugal, Brazil, Colombia and United States, this romantic drama tells the story of Luzia, a Brazilian screenwriter, and Adrian, a Colombian actor, that fall in love during a film festival in 2009 and will live a fragmented love story while competing in different film festivals around the world.

Jean feels trapped in the logic of longevity that the pharmaceutical industry imposes on him and decides to plan a conscious suicide. He invites Helena to commit suicide to two. She, on the other hand, hesitates, knows that she will live well even if she needs to live alone, but she helps him in his intentions. The silence between them does not reveal distance, but intimacy. These are years of shared affection. Together, they will prepare all the details for the funeral. He dances death while she continues rehearsing life. In the process, the two realize that before the end, there is still a lifetime.

Young directors are filming “The Exhibitionist” in the middle of a farm in a paradise-like region. The film poetically investigates the Brazilian soul, with the Amazon as the center of the world, reflecting on existential issues, the right to sexual freedom and individuality.

A film in which dream and reality intertwine, A Moça do Calendário tells the story of inácio, 40, married, without a permanent job. Ex-street sweeper, he works as a mechanic at Barato da Pesada, where he dreams of the calendar girl.

"All Paulos in the World" is a cinematographic essay about Paulo José, one of the greatest artists in Brazil, in the year in which he turns 80 years-old.

A documentary on the restoration of Rogério Sganzerla's 1970 film "Copacabana, Mon Amour".

Two days in the life of André Provisório, a man with many occupations: private detective, drug dealer, and incorrigible seducer. Between his activities, he meets Mariana, an aspiring theater actress, and falls in love.

A road movie that follows a solitary man as he sets of on a journey to the south of Brazil. The strange characters and absurd situations he encounters along the way present an extraordinary portrait of human relations.

Released from the Mental Health Wing of São Paulo State Penitentiary after forty years, the sadistic undertaker Zé do Caixão is back on the streets, haunted by ghostly visions and spirits of past victims but still set upon the goal that sent him to prison in the first place: finding a woman who can give him the perfect child.

Elias sees his world threatened when his ex-wife, one recovering junkie, asks for the guard of their son. Fito is in desperation for losing his father because of Elias. Isis, who hides in a vagabond hotel, can be the salvation for Fito and Elias.

Documentary about Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha, one of the most important names in the Cinema Novo, with interviews with some of his friends and colleagues.

At 84 years of age, Lúcia Rocha admitted herself to a hospital in São Paulo to undergo heart tests. Upon receiving the news about the risk to her life, Lúcia, laconic, tells the doctor: 'Then open it'. This is the second time she has undergone bypass surgery. From this gesture, the documentary Abry was born (with y, sign of the unconscious, according to the nomenclature invented by his son, Glauber Rocha). To relate her memories, she invites filmmaker Joel Pizzini, who offers his mini camera as an instrument to amplify Lúcia's imagination. Abry is a poetic dive into Lúcia Rocha's fabulous universe, reconstructing her trajectory in Brazilian cinema through sounds, images and characters with whom she lived closely.

Experimental documentary short that debates over Rogério Sganzerla's Brazilian cult classic "The Red Light Bandit".

A short documentary on Belair, an independent Brazilian film company that lasted for only five months in 1970.

"Portraits and excerpts from Brazilian films from all times. Actors, directors and images that affirm cinema."

Daniel is a taxi driver who’s married to Adalgisa. When she starts acting in low-budget movies, he forbids her from seeing their son, Joaquim. For more than a decade, Daniel nurtures a feeling of revenge for his ex-wife, which gains strength when their now adult son finds his mother in full professional decay.

Collective film with five segments around the works and life of brazilian writer Oswald de Andrade.

Daily scenes of a grotesque family living in the metaphorical island of Babaloo.

A dysfunctional family, composed of a prostitute and two gay men, one strong and the other fragile and stupid, lives a routine life in Rio de Janeiro. When the slut threatens the other two to stop supporting them, they decide to find an odalisque as an alternative to keep their easy life.

First film by Julio Bressane shot in exile, "Memoirs" is a film about a man who repeatedly kills the same type of woman in same places, the same way. Filmed on the streets of London.

The painter Tino, in professional and political crisis, receives a telegram from his mother-in-law, Selma, announcing her return from Europe. After his wife's death, Tino continues living with Selma, with whom he had ambiguous relations, which he now wants to sever. Weak at this impossible love, he asks the maid Enedina to lock him in his room. There, he revives memories through letters, notes and photographs. Selma's son João is waiting for her at the airport and dreams of loving fulfillment in his own mother's arms.

Sônia and her homosexual brother are both believed by their mother to be possessed by the devil. She works as a prostitute in the streets of Copacabana and he’s a servant who falls madly in love with his employer.

Bressane’s first color film, shot in the home of the artist Elyseu Visconti. Part of it is missing sound and final editing because the director was forced to leave Brazil. Horror and humor to deal with the subject of insanity: “In the end everyone leaves the house as though they were laboratory mice escaping, they invade the city and contaminate the world”. “If we talk about horror, this film deals with national horror, with Mojica Marins as an emblem. There might be a few touches of Corman and English horror, but it is another level of horror. What transformed the film was the location where we were shooting, the house of a 19th century painter, a receptacle of light. When I arrived and saw that house, that light, I said: ‘This is the film. This is the horror’. The meaning of the film, its appeal, derives from this laboratory of light” (J. Bressane). — Torino Film Festival

No synopsis available yet.

Born and raised in the misery of Brazilian slums, Jorge becomes a luxury house burglar in São Paulo and gets nicknamed "The Red Light Bandit" by the sensationalist press. In addition to wearing a red flashlight, he talks to his hostages in an irreverent tone and makes bold breakthroughs to later spend the money extravagantly. His world is the decadent neighbourhood of Boca do Lixo.

Based on true events in Rio de Janeiro, in 1960, when a gang having the infamous outlaw Tião Medonho as a leader performed a sensational railroad hold-up on a train carrying a small fortune.

The story of a civil servant who lives with his elderly mother. Falling in love with a corrupt politician's young and rich daughter, he abandons himself to crazy and violent situations.

In a small town in Minas Gerais, the arrival of a young priest causes a commotion in the conservative atmosphere of the place, aggravated by the sudden attraction this priest feels for a beautiful girl. This forbidden love affair soon turns into an unbridled passion.

Ângela Carne e Osso (Angela Meat and Bone), a young nymphomaniac, lives surrounded by delinquents, and exerts intense allure on them, dominating them all with her erotic power.

The relationship of a woman with three men - her husband, her lover and a man who fell in love with her -, told in a single night, through flashbacks

No synopsis available yet.