2019 / action, adventure, mystery / 2h 11min / directed by Juliano Dornelles & Kleber Mendonça Filho / country: Brazil | France / language: Portuguese | English / with English subtitles
Coming in March 20
“Set deep in the north-eastern Sertão – the Brazilian outback – it mashes up many themes and influences, but is chiefly a scream of satirical defiance against new president Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right globaliser who made his international statesman debut at Davos this year, famously promising to make the country more open to foreign trade. This movie’s closing credits pointedly note that the production created 800 jobs.Bacurau is a hallucinatory trauma with something of Alejandro Jodorowsky, or Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright. It is also a paranoid revenge western that reminded me of Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars, brusquely specifying the number of coffins that should be made ready.”
–Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“. . . A patient and sprawling portrait of a Brazilian community as it struggles to defend itself against the dark specter of modernity . . . “Bacurau” hinges on an immovably stubborn woman who refuses to relinquish her place in the world — who won’t allow our blind lust for the future to bury her meaningful ties to the past.”
–David Ehrlich, IndieWire
Set in the near future, the film follows Teresa (Bárbara Colen), who comes home to Bacurau, a fictional village in Brazil’s semi-arid sertão, to attend her grandmother’s funeral. Upon her arrival, Teresa immediately observes signs that Bacurau is in dire straits. Basic amenities are in short supply, mobile-phone coverage is fading, clean water supply is dammed and the truck that brings potable water arrives riddled with bullet holes. It soon becomes apparent that the corrupt government has forsaken the village completely: not only has Bacurau been literally erased from the map, but its citizens are under attack. As the responsible close in, the villagers must prepare an organized resistance to avoid greater damage. (source)
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