There’s a strange synchronicity in watching writer-director Gabriel Martins’ latest feature “Mars One” as Brazil rejoices in the recent re-election of Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva for a third term. The bittersweet film, in theaters and on Netflix now via Ava DuVernay’s distribution label Array, begins just as rightwing politician Jair Bolsonaro was elected in late 2018.
But for the working-class family at its center, the macro changes in the spheres of government don’t much register while they struggle to stay financially afloat. Bolsonaro’s election and inauguration play in the background of their everyday lives without any of the characters ever acknowledging or engaging with the results. Not only are they from a lower socioeconomic status, but they are Black in a still racist society, like most in Latin America.
By slowly introducing each of the four family members’ individual concerns in a mostly seamless manner (even...
But for the working-class family at its center, the macro changes in the spheres of government don’t much register while they struggle to stay financially afloat. Bolsonaro’s election and inauguration play in the background of their everyday lives without any of the characters ever acknowledging or engaging with the results. Not only are they from a lower socioeconomic status, but they are Black in a still racist society, like most in Latin America.
By slowly introducing each of the four family members’ individual concerns in a mostly seamless manner (even...
- 1/6/2023
- by Carlos Aguilar
- The Wrap
We have only just settled into the genial rhythms of Gabriel Martins’ “Mars One,” meeting one by one the loving, yearning family of four at its heart when, like capable, brassy matriarch Tércia (Rejane Faria), we get a shock to the system. Sitting at a lunch counter, Tércia is trying to ignore the ranting of a homeless man behind her. “Brazil is not for amateurs!” he bellows, and she shifts, more irritated than alarmed, until the man pulls out a bomb. The other diners flee, but Tércia remains rooted in horror as it explodes.
That this apparent terrorist attack is actually just a particularly nasty prank being pulled by a TV crew, is immediately revealed, though Tércia remains traumatized even when her family laugh off her experience at dinner that night. And the fake-out can’t help but feel a little similar to Martins’ film in its entirety: Despite a...
That this apparent terrorist attack is actually just a particularly nasty prank being pulled by a TV crew, is immediately revealed, though Tércia remains traumatized even when her family laugh off her experience at dinner that night. And the fake-out can’t help but feel a little similar to Martins’ film in its entirety: Despite a...
- 1/21/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
“A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist — moving an audience through a movie […] making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark,” said the late, great Gordon Willis. As we continue our year-end coverage, one aspect we must highlight is, indeed, cinematography. From talented newcomers to seasoned professionals, we’ve rounded up the examples that have most impressed us this year. Check out our rundown below and, in the comments, let us know your favorite work.
Araby (Leonardo Feliciano)
An epic travelogue of Sisyphean proportions zeroing in on the beguilingly ordinary, meandering life of a Brazilian ex-con trying to make ends meet by working any job imaginable, Affonso Uchoa and João Dumans’ Araby features several stunning vistas of the Brazilian South, but Leonardo Feliciano’s cinematography crafts a lot more than a travelogue. Alternating the lush palettes of the sprawling Brazilian countryside with the darker,...
Araby (Leonardo Feliciano)
An epic travelogue of Sisyphean proportions zeroing in on the beguilingly ordinary, meandering life of a Brazilian ex-con trying to make ends meet by working any job imaginable, Affonso Uchoa and João Dumans’ Araby features several stunning vistas of the Brazilian South, but Leonardo Feliciano’s cinematography crafts a lot more than a travelogue. Alternating the lush palettes of the sprawling Brazilian countryside with the darker,...
- 12/17/2018
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
“I’m like everyone else,” writes about himself Cristiano (Aristides de Sousa), the working class hero at the center of Affonso Uchoa and João Dumans’ Araby, “It’s just my life that was a little bit different.” Calling that an understatement would be a euphemism. An average-sized and average-looking factory worker in the Southern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, Cristiano is an everyman par excellence. Neither charismatic nor particularly striking – at least not on a first look – he seems so ordinary it takes us twenty minutes to understand he’s Araby’s protagonist, and not some flickering extra. When we first meet him, he is given a lift to his steel factory; up until then, Uchoa and Dumans had followed Andre (Murilo Caliari), a pensive and bookish teenage boy living with his aunt Márcia (Gláucia Vandeveld) in a derelict house close to the hellish steel mill. By the time we next hear about him,...
- 6/23/2018
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
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