Virtual Screening

BACURAU

Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juliano Dornelles

Brazil, 2020, 2h 12min, Portuguese & English

Virtual Screening

There are no current or future screenings planned for this film.

Co-directed by one of our favorite filmmakers, Kleber Mendonça Filho (AQUARIUS and NEIGHBORING SOUNDS), the film draws from the cinematic legacy of exploitation and siege films to make a provocative, ingenious and gloriously entertaining parable about the current state of global inequality. As an added bonus for Texas viewers, two of the film’s co-stars are products of the Austin film community, actors Chris Doubek (LOVERS OF HATE, COMPUTER CHESS) and Jonny Mars (THE HAPPY POET, SATURDAY MORNING MASSACRE). The film features a number of our other cult obsessions: Udo Kier, the great Sonia Braga (who previously starred in Mendonça Filho’s AQUARIUS) and the brilliant Karine Teles, who emerged on the global arthouse scene with THE SECOND MOTHER.

Set a few years from now… Bacurau, a small village in the Brazilian sertão, mourns the loss of its matriarch, Carmelita, who lived to be 94. Days later, its inhabitants (among them Sônia Braga) notice that their village has literally vanished from online maps and a UFO-shaped drone is seen flying overhead. There are forces that want to expel them from their homes, and soon, in a genre-bending twist, a band of armed mercenaries led by Udo Kier arrive in town picking off the inhabitants one by one. A fierce confrontation takes place when the townspeople turn the tables on the villainous outsiders, banding together by any means necessary to protect and maintain their remote community. The mercenaries just may have met their match in the fed-up, resourceful denizens of little Bacurau.

REVIEWS

“Critic’s Pick! “A heart-thumping political allegory that tips its hat to masters like John Carpenter.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“[A] boldly inventive political fantasy… offers a thrillingly imaginative playbook for resistance.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“A gloriously demented (and lightly psychedelic) Western.”
– David Ehrlich, IndieWire

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