Director

Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juliano Dornelles

Brazil, France | 2019 | 132 min | Portuguese, English with subtitles in English and Arabic

• Producer Emilie Lesclaux, Saïd Ben Saïd, Michel Merkt
• Production Company CinemaScópio Produções, SBS Productions
• Screenplay Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juliano Dornelles
• Cinematography Pedro Sotero
• Editing Eduardo Serrano
• Sound Nicolas Hallet, Cyril Holtz, Ricardo Cutz
• Cast Sonia Braga, Udo Kier, Bárbara Colen, Thomas Aquino
• Contacts
  Sbs Productions
  assistant@sbs-productions.com

About the Film

Bacurau takes its name from the tiny fictional town where it is set, in a remote region deep in the northeastern state of Pernambuco. We are first introduced to Teresa, who is travelling by water tanker, returning home for the funeral of Bacurau matriarch Carmelita.

Carmelita’s son, Plinio, who is the local schoolteacher, tries to show his young pupils the town of Bacurau on Google Maps, only to discover that it is no longer present. Tension grows as unusual events occurring in and around the village leave its inhabitants with the feeling of being in a state of siege and under organized attack. And indeed they are, as they will soon discover when a group of heavily armed strangers (led by the great actor Udo Kier) prepare for the orderly—yet enjoyable—obliteration of Bacurau. But the village’s inhabitants won’t go down without a fight.

Between Glauber Rocha and traditional Western movies, Bacurau finds its place through a highly symbolic—but also highly entertaining—narrative that prophetically presents a village erased from the maps, as it could easily happen in Bolsonaro’s era. Director Kleber Mendonça Filho also showed, with his two previous films, an uncanny ability to divine dark currents flowing under the Brazilian society. His first film Neighboring Sounds (2012) and Aquarius (2016) were both parables and metaphors for the direction Brazil was taking socially.

Teresa Cavina