Bacurau: the feature film dividing Brazilian audiences

Bacurau, the latest feature film from director Kleber Mendonça Filho (Aquarius, Neighboring Sounds) and his longtime art director Juliano Dornelles, is the talk of the town among Brazilian cinephiles. Opening on August 29 to a BRL 1.5 million box office, it is a rare example of a domestic film—which isn’t a comedy or action flick—being able to stir up significant attention from the public.

Set “a few years from now” in the arid backlands of Brazil’s Northeast, the film tells the story of Bacurau, a small town which has disappeared from conventional maps and quickly comes under threat from mysterious forces. Starring Sônia Braga, Udo Kier, and Bárbara Colen, Bacurau was applauded and decorated at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where it won the Jury Prize.

The film has taken on a political edge, being considered by some as an indictment of the sitting Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, and some showings of the film have even seen audiences burst into applause, chanting anti-government slogans.

Three of The Brazilian Report’s journalists went to see Bacurau this past week, and here is what they made of it.

Euan Marshall: “What do you call someone from Bacurau?”

Engaging and mysterious, Bacurau is a mixture of Weird West with Northeast Brazilian cordel literature, doused in psychedelia. It is a challenging type of film to get right: juggling multiple genres and working in dozens of metaphors often tips films like Bacurau off the rails in an overreaching attempt to be too clever. This, however, is not the case with Kleber Mendonça’s latest. A tight script...