Bacurau

(Bacurau)

Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juliano Dornelles / Brazil, France / 2019 / 131 min
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  • ACADEMY AWARD®

    BRAZIL'S SUBMISSION FOR BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

  • Cannes Film Festival

    Jury Prize

  • Montréal Festival of New Cinema

    People's Choice Award

  • Munich Film Festival

    Best International Film

  • São Paulo Association of Art Critics Awards

    Best Film, Best Director

  • New York Film Critics Circle Award

    Best Foreign Language Film

  • New York Film Festival

  • Toronto International Film Festival

Spanish Film Club
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Synopsis

English and Portuguese with English subtitles

With Sônia Braga, Udo Kier, Bárbara Colen, Thomas Aquino, Silvero Pereira, Thardelly Lima, Rubens Santos, Wilson Rabelo, Luciana Souza, Karine Teles, Antonio Saboia, Carlos Francisco

ACADEMY AWARD® BRAZIL’S SUBMISSION FOR BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

A few years from now…
Bacurau, a small village in the Brazilian sertão, mourns the loss of its matriarch, Carmelita, who lived to be 94. Days later, its inhabitants (among them Sônia Braga) notice that their village has literally vanished from online maps and a UFO-shaped drone is seen flying overhead. There are forces that want to expel them from their homes, and soon, in a genre-bending twist, a band of armed mercenaries led by Udo Kier arrive in town picking off the inhabitants one by one.

A fierce confrontation takes place when the townspeople turn the tables on the villainous outsiders, banding together by any means necessary to protect and maintain their remote community. The mercenaries just may have met their match in the fed-up, resourceful denizens of little Bacurau.

Award-winning and critically acclaimed, Bacurau is a box office sensation seen in Brazil by over a million people.

Related Subjects
About the Director
Kleber Mendonça Filho began his career as a film critic and journalist. He wrote for newspapers, such as Jornal do Commercio and Folha de S. Paulo, for magazines such as Continente and Cinética, and for his own site, CinemaScópio. Neighbouring Sounds (O Som ao Redor, 2013) was Mendonça’s first feature-length drama. Mendonça’s films have received more than 120 awards in Brazil and abroad, with selections in festivals such as New York, Copenhagen, and Cannes. Film festivals in Rotterdam, Toulouse, and Santa Maria da Feira have presented retrospectives of his films. He has also served as a programmer of cinema for the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation.

Juliano Dornelles is a founding member of the creative group ‘Símio Filmes’. Working as a Production Designer for more than 16 years, his partnership with Kleber Mendonça Filho started on the set of the short film Eletrodoméstica (2004). He was also the Production Designer of O Som ao Redor (Neighbouring Sounds, 2013) and Aquarius (2016). His first feature film O Ateliê da Rua do Brum is currently in post-production.

Press

“Critic's Pick! Exhilarating. A heart-thumping political allegory that tips its hat to masters like John Carpenter.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“[A] boldly inventive political fantasy... offers a thrillingly imaginative playbook for resistance...Gloriously demented.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“A genre-busting entertainment that is at once a portrait of a community, a horror thriller and a timely piece of political filmmaking. Bacurau is one of those movies like Parasite... where you're never quite sure which way it's heading.” – John Powers, NPR

“Utterly distinctive filmmaking, executed with ruthless clarity and force. A scream of satirical defiance. This is not just fantasy, not just symbolism – it is the shape of things to come. ” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“A modern-day western with some of the raw, hallucinatory power of a Sergio Leone epic. Rich and extremely filling. ” – Justin Chang, The Los Angeles Times

“A perfect blend of blistering social commentary and illicit genre-flick thrills.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone

Notes on the Film

“Bacurau is composed of many desires to re-assess deep-seated memories of film-going and cinephilia. But it is a very personal interpretation of the region and what it means for us and for Brazilian society.”

– Kleber Mendonça Filho – Co-director

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