Rafael dos Santos Rocha

One night seven years ago, Rafael came home after work and discovered that people he did not know had come looking for him. He immediately fled, without looking back. From that moment on, his life changed, as if that night had never ended. One evening, around an improvised fire near a factory, he decides to confide his journey to a stranger. Rafael’s intimate account meets the collective testimony of an entire nation oppressed by poverty, police repression and institutional corruption.

In Miguel Burnier, a small, deserted town in Minas Gerais, Brazil, a few remaining inhabitants have been trying since 2005 to survive the purchase of their land by a mining giant. Tormented by unemployment, isolation and alcoholism, they try their best to keep their community together and to breathe new life into this village where the world seems to have collapsed.

The film explores the material evidence of modifications made to the DOPS building in BH for the purpose of political repression and human rights violations during the military regime and after it. The film also presents the narrative dispute that took place between victims of torture and DOPS delegates during the CPI of the prison system in 1997.