Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho

Stars: Wagner Moura, Tânia Maria, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Gabriel Leone, Gregorio Graziosi

Set in 1977 Brazil, ‘a time of mischief’, writer-director Fihlo’s picture is a complex, sprawling and playful but deadly serious study of a country in moral and political disarray. It opens with Marcelo (‘Narco’s’ Moura) pulling into a remote petrol station where he sees a dead body covered by cardboard. The local police cannot be bothered to check it out, but search Marcelo’s car looking for drugs and weapons. Only a bribe gets them off his back. He makes his way to a small community of dissenters presided over by seventy-seven-year-old activist Donna Sebastiana (Maria). She gives Marcelo cash and a contact who will be able to provide fake IDs for him and his son Fernando (Nunes) who has been in the care of Marcelo’s projectionist father-in-law Alexandre (Francisco). It is revealed that Marcelo, who is head of a university research department, has upset Ghirotti (Graziosi), a corrupt federal official from San Paolo, hence his flight from the city. While Marcelo is waiting for his papers, two hitmen arrive in town. In true thriller style the events unfurl against a carnival taking place in town. Cinematographer Evgenia Alexandrova effectively evokes the 70s milieu via widescreen photography, grainy images and split screen effects, bolstered by a well-curated selection of period hits. Filho skilfully juggles political thriller elements with comedy, absurdism and horror elements - a bizarre b-movie detour has a killer dismembered leg stalking the local parks. The story occasionally jumps to the present day where Marcelo’s story is being investigated. A gripping study of festering corruption and a country refusing to countenance its troubled history with a devastating contemporary coda.