Aliança

Zilda has had to put up with too much crap and she ain't taking it anymore.

Vicentina struggles to cope with the death of her son Wesley after a tragic bus accident, in which he was the driver. As the investigation unfolds, evidence suggests that Wesley’s actions may have been suicidal. Vicentina then embarks on a journey to seek out the victims’ families and apologize, while confronting her own grief and uncertainty.

Gilberto and Jacira promised to grow old together – for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Till death them do part.

After her grandmother’s death, Ana finds herself adrift. Following the clues left by her late grandmother, Ana arrives in Belo Horizonte and meets Alice. As they make sense of the city’s layout and their memories, Ana and Alice will discover what it means to become who they are.

A Black Brazilian family in the city of Belo Horizonte, tries to rebuild their home after a recent loss. Caught between memories and nightmares, and unable to express what they feel to each other, a mother and her children shield themselves from the pain of grief through their individual routines. Only the youngest child understands the secret that the house holds within its four walls and tries to reveal it to the others, only to fall on deaf ears. Finally, confronted with the truth, they face the deep roots of their grief and come together to traverse this moment with love and courage.

A middle-class Black family in Brazil copes with the election of a far-right extremist president. The mother believes that she's cursed after an unexpected encounter, while her husband puts all of his hopes into their son's soccer career.

During the slavery period in Brazil, a sugar cane farm was the stage for the darkest kinds of horrors. Years later, the place's cruel past is still stained in its walls, even if unnoticed, until a series of strange events starts happening and death returns to the farm. The film is divided in five short horror stories.

The inhabitants of the Brazilian city of Contagem yearn for a better life. At the core of it all is Selma, a woman dreaming about the heart of the world: it could be anywhere, as long as it's a place where to feel happier.

In order to take a new job as an employee in the public sanitation department, Juliana moves from the inner city of Itaúna to the metropolitan town of Contagem in Brazil. While waiting for her husband to join her, she adapts to her new life, meeting people and discovering new horizons, trying to overcome her past.

An event, four people and the city of Contagem.

With its obvious simplicity, the film’s title happens to set the mood of the film, or at least its guiding principle: staying anchored in everyday life. More precisely, the life of Maria José and Norberto, who have been married for 35 years and who live in Contagem, in the suburbs of Belo Horizonte. Their marriage is on the rocks, which leads their two sons to also wonder about the future of their own relationships with their wives. The story is quite ordinary. How can one capture such an impercep- tible shift in the heart of the banality of things, only made more noticeable by a crisis? Filming his own family, his own parents, his brother and himself, André Novais Oliveira has chosen to take his time. He shots long sequences, leaving enough time for the fictional situations on which he puts his characters to grow and unfold. Then he uses wide frames to linger on more mundane, concrete or at times farcical moments: eating an orange, cooking, watching television...

Erik, a 13-year-old boy, has a platonic crush on Sheila and, to get closer to her, claims to have a tape at home with the legendary “last episode” of the cartoon Dungeons & Dragons. With the help of his friends, he seeks a way out of the mess he has gotten himself into, experiencing an intense coming-of-age story.

Within me lives a silence. At night, he goes with his claws, hunting for something to scream.

The young Jimena searches for her identity. The film follows the life of the young woman with her mother and grandmother, white middle-class women, and the exchange of letters with her father, a foreign and black man, whom the young woman resembles. Seeking to free herself from the feeling of inadequacy, Jimena rewrites her family relationships and creates other ways of experiencing love, friendship and work ties. Through her eyes, the film considers questions about class, family, tradition, race and gender.

Mauro runs and runs, but Long Bueno remains far far away.