LAR Gallery, Lagos / Thu 31 OCT 21h30 CINEMA / 2018 / 114' / M12 / Free Admission
There are no spirits or snakes tonight and the forest around the village is quiet. Fifteen-year-old Ihjãc has nightmares since he lost his father. He is an indigenous Krahô from the north of Brazil.
Ihjãc walks into darkness, his sweaty body moves with fright. A distant chant comes through the palm trees. His father’s voice calls him to the waterfall: it ́s time to organize the funerary feast so the spirit can depart to the dead’s village. The mourning must cease. Denying his duty and in order to escape a crucial process of becoming a shaman, Ihjãc runs away to the city. Far from his people and culture, he faces the reality of being an indigenous in contemporary Brazil.
Awarded with the Jury Prize – Un Certain Regard at Cannes Festival – 2018.
João Salaviza was born in Lisbon, 1984. He graduated from The National Film and Theater Academy (ESTC) in Portugal, and Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires. His feature debut Mountain world premiered at the Venice Film Festival – Critic’s Week 2015. It came on the heels of a trilogy of short films: Rafa (Berlinale Golden Bear 2012) and Arena (Palme d’Or at the Festival de Cannes 2009) and Cerro Negro. In recent years he was back at the Berlinale with the short films Hight Cities of Bone and Russa.
The Dead and the Others, co-directed with Renée Nader Messora, is his second feature film.
Renée Nader Messora was born in S. Paulo in 1979. She is a graduate in Cinematography from the Universidad del Cine – Buenos Aires. For fifteen years she worked as an assistant director in Brazil, Argentina and Portugal. In 2009 Renée Nader Messora met the Krahô indigenous people. Since then, she is working with the community, participating in the mobilisation of a local collective of Krahô filmmakers. Their work is focused in the use of cinema as a tool for self-determination and the strengthening of cultural identity. The Dead and the Others is her debut as a director.