Sete anos em Maio

Following the internationally acclaimed film Arábia, Brazilian filmmaker Affonso Uchôa presents his new take on social injustice. In the darkness of the night and lit only by a bonfire, a young man delivers a long, sickening confession of a traumatic experience he su ered seven years before. One night, when coming back home from work, he was surprised by a group of cops looking for him at his mother’s house. Taken for another man, Rafael dos Santos was persecuted and violently abused by the police. From that moment on, his life changed forever, as if that night never ended. Each word that comes out of his mouth counts and at the end, he asks his interloctutor “Is your story different?” Rafael’s intimate account meets the collective testimony of an entire nation oppressed by poverty, police repression, and institutional corruption. A powerful film built around the words of a working class man to tell the story of a broken country ruined by state violence. Uchôa’s filmmaking, which is maturing film by film, registers as the most important political voice in Brazilian cinema today. (Viennale)