On Behalf of My Son

A middle-class Black family in Brazil copes with the election of a far-right extremist president. The mother believes that she's cursed after an unexpected encounter, while her husband puts all of his hopes into their son's soccer career.

After having invaded liquid, gaseous and solid substances, a strange voice takes possession of a woman's body and for the first time experiences the taste of something truly human. Together, the voice and the body seek for belonging and an identity of their own as they question their roles within society.

A man waits on the top of his house's roof with his friend. They are talking to each other until this friend realises something quite strange.

Another day in the life of an elderly couple in the suburbs.

The construction of a community goes far beyond its erected walls and masonry bricks: it lies in the everyday invention of the commonplace, of life shared in its struggles and victories. Stemming from this premise, this debut feature film (by the directors of Na Missão com Kadu) documents the daily life of the urban occupation Eliana Silva, in the city of Belo Horizonte, on the eve of the 2018 elections. Seen from the inside, the hard-won territory becomes a protagonist as much as its residents, as they talk about political activism, companionship, love. Along with the records and personal testimonies is the (re)invention of subjectivity through art, going up against the totalizing narratives that reduce their existence to a newspaper news story.

2010: Just as the Brazilian government launch a military-assisted siege on one of Rio de Janeiro’s most notorious and criminally-controlled favelas, the identities of four undercover policemen operating in the slum are accidentally leaked. As violence mounts, the favela’s ruthless boss, orders his men to hunt them down.

In order to take a new job as an employee in the public sanitation department, Juliana moves from the inner city of Itaúna to the metropolitan town of Contagem in Brazil. While waiting for her husband to join her, she adapts to her new life, meeting people and discovering new horizons, trying to overcome her past.

During the slavery period in Brazil, a sugar cane farm was the stage for the darkest kinds of horrors. Years later, the place's cruel past is still stained in its walls, even if unnoticed, until a series of strange events starts happening and death returns to the farm. The film is divided in five short horror stories.

Andre and Elida are dating for a short time. In real life and in fiction.

With its obvious simplicity, the film’s title happens to set the mood of the film, or at least its guiding principle: staying anchored in everyday life. More precisely, the life of Maria José and Norberto, who have been married for 35 years and who live in Contagem, in the suburbs of Belo Horizonte. Their marriage is on the rocks, which leads their two sons to also wonder about the future of their own relationships with their wives. The story is quite ordinary. How can one capture such an impercep- tible shift in the heart of the banality of things, only made more noticeable by a crisis? Filming his own family, his own parents, his brother and himself, André Novais Oliveira has chosen to take his time. He shots long sequences, leaving enough time for the fictional situations on which he puts his characters to grow and unfold. Then he uses wide frames to linger on more mundane, concrete or at times farcical moments: eating an orange, cooking, watching television...

The inhabitants of the Brazilian city of Contagem yearn for a better life. At the core of it all is Selma, a woman dreaming about the heart of the world: it could be anywhere, as long as it's a place where to feel happier.

Tereza, born during the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020, is being cared for by her parents Rimenna and Gabriel.

Gilberto and Jacira promised to grow old together – for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Till death them do part.