Tropical Curse

A Nigerian musician travels to Brazil to search for his estranged brother, who is living a life very different than the one his family thought.

This is a film about Christopher Kirk, an American IT guy who moves to Colombia after reading about Pablo Escobar’s hippopotamuses. It is also a film about the story of V., a story that Kirk obsessively tells and retells about his infatuation with a mysterious Japanese-columbian woman. A story that may or may not have to do with his arrest in 2009 in Brazil for international drug trafficking. Moreover, it is also a film about two directors.

Over a trio of summers, a caretaker for luxury condominiums relies on her resourcefulness and her eye for opportunity to take advantage of whatever comes her way.

Rânia is a teenage girl who lives on Santa Teresinha hill in the city of Fortaleza. Her busy days are also occupied by the dream of being a dancer. Rânia's best friend, Zizi, introduces her to 'Sereia da Noite', a local joint where fun, dance, money and sex rock the night. When Rânia meets the choreographer Estela, she will be torn between the possibility to make money in the nightclub and the will to become a "real dancer".

Gabriel, a 24-year-old anthropologist from a wealthy family from the interior of the Northeast, is gay and in the closet. Following the death of his grandmother, he decides to go to Rio de Janeiro to study the lives of sex workers. Seduced by his object of study, Gabriel will become one of them.

Silvia is an introspective young girl who is not interested in the daily routine between family and school. Everything abruptly changes when Artur arrives unexpectedly in her class, after being banned from several other schools. Silvia is amazed by the vitality of the boy, who actually suffers from a serious illness – hemophilia. The two immerse themselves in an intense and brief coexistence, interrupted by an accident in which Artur’s bleeds to death. Silvia gets sick and sees her life turn into a strange nightmare. The mourning gradually becomes an obsession, and obsession becomes a goal – Silvia will do anything to bring him back to life.

Rio de Janeiro, 2020. The city has been engulfed in flames and its waters are either dried up or contaminated. From the depths of the Earth and from the sky disoriented extra-human beings appears.

Fifty-something Rosa, lying in an MRI scanner, is prompted to summon a happy memory. She plunges into a meandering, subconscious road trip with her indomitable mother, both queer, where wild imagination becomes a tender, unruly form of therapy.

A hybrid being arises in a forest exploited for its latex and, together with other imaginary and real entities, tries to survive amid the destruction of the world as we know it, clinging to what may exist after its end.

Chapter 4 of Cosmopolitics of Animals.

Documentary about the work of Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão. With images collected over several years, scenes that pass through Inhotim —where there is her permanent gallery— Ouro Preto, Salvador, Bahia’s Recôncavo, Hong Kong, USA and Portugal; places chosen because they have a strong connection with the narrative of her work, the film reveals the creative process, the connections established and the many references present in the work of this unique artist.

A eukaryotic film immersed in multispecies relationships. Loosely adapted from "A Cosmopolítica dos Animais" [The Cosmopolitcs of Animals] (Juliana Fausto, n-1 edições, 2020).