My Foreign Land

Following a newspaper ad, ordinary women tell part of their life stories to director Eduardo Coutinho, which are then re-enacted by actresses, blurring the barriers between truth, fiction and interpretation.

The daily lives and routine of 37 families living in a huge 12-story building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro: their drama, aspirations, intimate revelations, loneliness, dreams...

César Benjamin was arrested in August 1971 during student protests against the Brazilian military dictatorship. Although he was a juvenile, he was tried as an adult and sentenced to 13 years in prison. Thanks to the ardent campaigning of his mother Iramaya, working closely together with the Swedish branch of Amnesty International, he was released five years later.

Intermissions follows Lula during the hectic election campaign for the presidency in 2002. Lula gave filmmaker João Moreira Salles and his crew complete access, and the result is an intimate documentary of what went on behind the scenes. Sometimes, Lula is afraid that he will lose his freedom as president. Combined with Lula's candor, the film's observational style provides some very special insight into one of Brazil's most popular leaders.

A documentary about urban violence in Brazil, especially in Rio de Janeiro. Policemen, drug dealers, and shantytown dwellers get trapped in a daily war that knows no winners.

A personal essay which analyses and compares images of the political upheavals of the 1960s. From the military coup in Brazil to China's Cultural Revolution, from the student uprisings in Paris to the end of the Prague Spring.

Documentary about Santiago, a peculiar man who used to work for the director and his parents as a butler. The material was filmed in 1992 but, for some strange reason, the director felt he couldn't edit it and put it aside. In 2005 he remembers the unfinished film and starts its edition.

Simple, emotionally compelling documentary that delves into the songs that hold meaning in people's lives. It is composed of 18 sessions where the director engages his subjects in conversation about the song they picked. The end product is deeply personal stories about music and its intimate connection to memory, love, loss, self-discovery, regret, death, and life.

Conceição and Presto, an interracial couple, ask Presto's brother for his signature as a guarantor of the financial request supposed to assure them an apartment in Leblon, the whitest neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. The process proves to be much harder than they had imagined.

A resident of the Cantagalo favela in Rio de Janeiro, Adão Xalebaradã is the composer of more than 500 songs and has never been recorded in Brazil.

In the 1970s, "festivals" were incredibly popular in Brazil, as they were recorded before a live studio audience, and usually featured a number of elimination rounds. They also formed the springboard for the career of many a big-name stars, such as Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Roberto Carlos and Gilberto Gil. Appearing on such a program was no cakewalk, however: audiences could be as wild in their condemnation as in their appreciation of an artist. Extensive archive footage (including performances and behind-the-scenes interviews) from the turbulent final evening of the Festival of Brazilian Popular Music 1967 paints a fascinating picture, not only of the transformation of Brazilian music into real "festival" music, but also of a society starting to buck against the yoke of military rule.

Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso reflects on his imprisonment in 1968, during the military dictatorship.

João Moreira Salles' "Nelson Freire" is a film-documentary about the great Brazilian pianist, who is certainly among the five great pianists of the world today. Nelson Freire is a quite discreet / shy person and João Salles respected this feature of his personality. During almost two years he followed the pianist around the world to compose a film, made of 31 thematic sections to cover the many aspects of the life of this genius of the piano.

Continuing the exploration of the thin line between truth and performance, Eduardo Coutinho turns his attention to the drama generated during rehearsals for the Galpão Theater Company’s performance of Chekov’s The Three Sisters. As he shoots scenes from the play, Coutinho attempts to capture the very moment in which reality becomes fiction and vice versa—whether through the actors’ bodies and words or in backstage scenes of a performance that will exist only on film.

A light-hearted and high-spirited story, full of spice, sensuality and romance, Viva Zapato tells the tale of Dolores, a beautiful Cuban dancer who decides to leave her failing marriage and open a restaurant by the beach with her aunt from Brazil. When her aunt sends her a pair of shoes instead of the money to start up the restaurant, she angrily sells the useless gift for spare change. Her dream fades away - until she discovers that the money was hidden in the heel. The zany search for the shoes begins, as she follows the footsteps through the lively streets of Havana, running into the quirky, colorful characters that bring Viva Zapato and Dolores' dream.

Six people, one family, ten years later. Dois Tempos resumes the narrative of the lives of the Braz, created in 2000, in the documentary A Família Braz. In 2010 the same directors return to the same house to update the portrait of the six characters. A decade later, what has been done with your expectations of the past, how you live life in the present and what to provide for the future.