The films selected for this year’s programme are, in the words of festival founder and organizer Pieca Levy “a reflection of the Brazilian terrain: vast, diverse and colourful”. A total of 9 films are being screened at cinemas around the country during the week-long festival.
The festival opens on 2 May at the Kinepolis on Kirchberg with feel-good movie “O Filme da Minha Vida”, directed by, and starring Selton Mello. Based on the novel “Un padre de película” by Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta, the film follows a young man who returns to his hometown only to discover that his father (played by Vincent Cassel) has returned to France.
Marcelo Gomes’s “Joaquim”, screened on 4 May at the Cinémathèque, is an episodic look at the exploits of the 18th-century Brazilian independence fighter known as Tiradentes. “Vazante”, the solo directorial debut from Walter Salles’s collaborator Daniela Thomas, has been described as a visually striking film that explores race and gender relations 60 years before the end of slavery in Brazil. It is shown on 5 May at the CNA’s Starlight cinema in Dudelange.
In Carolina Jabor’s tense mystery “Liquid Truth”, shown on 5 May at Cinémathèque, centres on an accusation that a swimming teacher has kissed one of his young pupils. Rather more upbeat, Caito Ortiz’s crime caper drama “O Roubo da Taca”, screened 6 May at Utopia, is inspired by the real theft of the iconic Jules Rimet football world cup trophy. It features Afro-Brazilian star Tais Araujo (photo).
The other film with English subtitles is “Desert” by Guilherme Weber. Shown on 8 May at the Cinémathèque, the film is a drama about an old group of traveling circus artists who decide to settle down when they come across an abandoned town with a fountain gushing clean water.