O Seu Amor de Volta (Mesmo que ele não queira)

"Portraits and excerpts from Brazilian films from all times. Actors, directors and images that affirm cinema."

In 1965, a year after the military coup in Brazil, an oasis of freedom opened in the country's capital. The Brasília Film Festival: a landmark of cultural and political resistance. Its story is that of Brazilian cinema itself.

Every being has dreams in their own way.

While the country is under the yoke of a military junta and corrupt priests preach the apocalypse, a lawless, eccentric family – a kind of Bonnie & Clyde with kids – trek through the Brazilian interior. Their first aim is to deliver a consignment of weapons to a group of militant nuns who have withdrawn to the jungle, living off the income from their cannabis plantation. As gay , bi, trans, the converts so organized to make revolution.

Young Alice lives with her mother Helena in Ciarema, in a house facing the sea. The residence suffers from the advance of the sea levels. The daughter, an environmentalist, plans to move elsewhere, but the mother wants to stay in town. They need to find a solution together.

Hermila and Leandro want to escape. Hermila and Leandro want to stay.

As São Paulo erupts in an unprecedented wave of violence, a lawyer with underworld ties must strike a deal with the police to rescue her kidnapped niece.

Bacurau, a small town in the Brazilian sertão, mourns the loss of its matriarch, Carmelita, who lived to be 94. Days later, its inhabitants notice that their community has vanished from most maps.

As a doctoral student, she investigates women's rights to expression within peasant protests; through this engagement, she seeks the strength to dismantle the fundamental structures of patriarchy, addressing issues such as marriage, family, and the valuation of these women's labor and freedom. This is a fictional film rooted in many real-life moments — shot at the MST’s (Landless Workers' Movement) Normandia encampment in Caruaru — that blends fiction with documentary elements.

40-year-old Daniel has been suspended from active police work and is under internal investigation for violence. When Sara, his internet love affair, stops answering his texts he decides to drive north in search of her, starting on what is apparently a fool's errand. He shows Sara's picture around, but nobody seems to recognize the woman. Until eventually one guy pops up, saying he can put the two in touch under very specific conditions.

In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro of the 1930s, João Francisco dos Santos is several things — son of slaves, ex-convict, thug, homosexual and adopted father for a number of pariahs. João expresses himself on the stage of a cabaret as Madame Satã.

Macabéa has just moved to the big city after her aunt, who raised her, died. She gets a job as a typist and moves into a boarding house with three other women. In her spare time, she listens to a radio station called Time; on Sundays, she likes to ride the metro. Then she meets Olímpico, a northeasterner like herself, who has dreams of becoming a congressman.

Helen lives in a cortiço with her grandmother, Mrs. Graça, who supports the family with informal jobs, such as selling skewers. Still very naive, her biggest concern is buying her grandmother a birthday present: a makeup kit. The girl is going to bend over backwards to get the money and her search will reveal the daily life of those living in tenements, outlining a collective story from the network of relations that the girl establishes.

A man falls in love with a teenage girl, who is exploited by her own grandfather, who sometimes takes her to a gas station to show her naked to whomever pays him some money.

1942, in the middle of Northeastern Brazil, two very different men meet along the road: Johan, an aspirin salesman avoiding the German draft, and Ranulpho, a rural Brazilian seeking escape from the drought.

The writer Ana, recently orphaned, decides to venture down the alleys of memory and her broken relationship with her mother and grandmother.

Policarpo is a chauvinistic patriot, a major who tries to find solutions for Brazilian problems using only the resources of his own country. His visionary and idealistic temperament is behind his strange ideas about how to build a great nation.

In an arid and poor region of Brazil, bikers search for a miracle to make it rain and save the land, risking their lives.

An existential western about the pain of a family and the silence of a country.

Before his compulsory retirement, on his last day of work, Marshall, JFK airport's chief Immigration officer, detains a group of Latin Americans and expose them to a series of humiliating situations. Blinded by prejudice, Marshall ends up by causing the death of a young Brazilian. After a period in prison, Marshall goes to Brazil, deadly ill and in a desperate search in order to purge his guilt. In his quest, he is guided by Bia, a young prostitute.

In northern Brazil, Hermila patiently waits for her husband. However, he has abandoned her. Sexy, restless and resolute, she raffles off "a night in paradise" with herself. This beautifully-shot portrait doesn't shy away from the burdens of a young scarred woman, but it also celebrates her courage to live according to her own rules.

After taking in an abandoned child, Teresa meets Antônio and the two begin a journey on the roads. The common past, for them, is the memories of a city submerged at the bottom of a dam. Life is a dream, but the future is uncertainty.

Cecília, a successful young model, returns to Recife, her hometown, to spend Christmas with her mother. One night, a neighbour she hadn’t seen for a long time, João, shows her a bottle with a mysterious and intoxicating green substance. Cecília begins to fall in love with João, but also discovers he is involved in a secret cult around the figure of Salomé, the luxurious biblical princess.

When principles conflict with the rights of others, there is only one way out. *Film part of the 8 by 8 project: Renewal of the Super-8 cinema cycle in Paraíba.