Lourenço Mutarelli

After leaving her daughter Jessica in a small town in Pernambuco to be raised by relatives, Val spends the next 13 years working as a nanny to Fabinho in São Paulo. She has financial stability but has to live with the guilt of having not raised Jessica herself. As Fabinho’s university entrance exams approach, Jessica reappears in her life and seems to want to give her mother a second chance. However, Jessica has not been raised to be a servant and her very existence will turn Val’s routine on its head. With precision and humour, the subtle and powerful forces that keep rigid class structures in place and how the youth may just be the ones to shake it all up.

The small town of Furnas Fundas hides a secret far older than its pastures, forests, or the people who live there. During a heated election marred by scandals, Bartira, known merely as the town drunk, unexpectedly finds herself at the center of it all. It’s up to her to face a dark force that has returned to turn the town into a true bloodbath.

A pawn shop proprietor buys used goods from desperate locals – as much to play perverse power games as for his own livelihood, but when the perfect rump and a backed-up toilet enter his life, he loses all control.

Western book writer, Eugenio is going through a difficult phase. He is famous for the novels starring the Jesus Kid, but his sales have been going from bad to worse for some time. The light at the end of the tunnel seems to be a film director's invitation: he wants Eugenio to write a film script. However, to write this script, Eugênio must spend three months isolated in a luxury hotel, without being able to go out or have contact with the world he knows. Based on this premise, Mutarelli builds a scathing critique of the publishing market and the film market — where he has been circulating for years. Bringing to Eugênio much of his own personality, the author shows how the commercial part of culture can be perverse to those who work in it.

After losing his job and the end of his marriage, Júnior returns to his father's house. But that is not his childhood house anymore. His old room has been rented by a young woman and the place feels unwelcome and oppressive. Júnior develops and obsession for his family history, as strange things start happening in the house.

A talent scout brings a young singer to São Paulo, intent on introducing her to a renowned conductor. As they wait for the day of the audition, they stay in a hotel room where, between coffee and cigarettes, the scout foresees the singer’s future in the cigarette pack warnings as if they were tarot cards. During all this waiting, his true intentions will be revealed.

To escape her abusive husband, garbage collector Gal packs her two young children, Rihanna and Benin, onto the top of her cart and heads across São Paulo to her cousin’s house. As she struggles to avoid the dangers of the streets along the way, she convinces the children that they are on a big and exciting adventure. When they arrive at her cousin’s house, they are warmly welcomed and fed. However, what initially seems like a safe haven soon turns out to be a trap. Gal realises that not only her own safety is at risk, but also the future of her children.

Unknown Language is an investigation into our unconscious and all the social vulnerability it brings. The documentary features 15 interviewees, including musicians Marcelo Yuka and Otto, actor and comedian Gregório Duvivier, artist Eduardo Marinho, writer and cartoonist Lourenço Mutarelli, psychologist and hypnologist Gilda Moura, and psychoanalyst Pedro de Santi.