Reflective Encounters

“A black screen. Sounds of the rainforest chirp. Red text exclaims ‘everything exists,’ then a thumb flicks a lighter, and we are launched into Janaina Wagner’s fantasia: a roadside excursion across the south Amazon Forest.

She raises a shard of broken mirror to her face, the light reflecting on her, as a passing motorbike hides a cut: her disappearance. With flat affect, Vitória Pereira plays a dead teenage prostitute, Iracema, who travels through physical space from the place of her death to the depths of the Amazon, where she can meet the Brazilian folkloric figure of Curupira. 

Landscape shots inhabit her perspective. From the back of a truck, the camera shakes so hard that a sausage dog appears as an illusion, a trick of the light. Otherwise, distant static shots, plump with primary colours, take in the rural locations. Later, a translucent herd of cows stop traffic, like a magical realist moment from an Apichatpong Weerasethakul film. 

Sometimes facts and figures appear on screen as though an essay film. Archival photographs of 20th century scenes of deforestation – indigenous land stolen and destroyed for corporate progress – bring the speculative mystery into sharp focus. Across 25 pulsating minutes, this ambitious and rewarding film unfurls with otherworldly panache.”

— Ben Flanagan