Rio International film festival has a documentary about samba schools

 

From October 5th and for the next ten days cariocas will be living in the Brazil’s cinema capital. It’s the 19th edition of Rio Movie Festival. This year’s line-up has a selection of documentaries about dozens of famous Brazilian musicians, singers, writers and actors including one that is especially interesting to those who are into Carnival.

Brazilian singer Maria Bethânia is the central character of Fevereiros, a documentary directed by Marcio Debellian. He shows all the preparations for the presentation and the parade of Mangueira Samba School in Carnival 2016. If in the Sambadrome she was the greatest star, the contrast is great when she is barefeet at her homeland, the small city of Santo Amaro in the Northeastern state of Bahia.

After showing her in the local party and interviewing her brother, another famous singer (Caetano Veloso) and Mangueira’s artistic director Leandro Vieira, the film puts her thrilled on top of a float during the Carnival parade.

Photo: Ramon Moreira

Photo: Ramon Moreira

Of course there is not only samba in FestRio. The documentary is one the 78 Brazilian productions (long and short) selected. The organization of the festival plans to show 250 films from 60 different countries, ranging from Hollywood backstage to a small village in the African nation of Congo, or the war in Syria.

Since its first edition in 1999, FestRio has earned prestige and became one of the World’s most important festivals where films just exhibited in Cannes, Sundance, Venice and Toronto are shown. There is also an important commercial event, Rio Market where seminars, workshops, masterclasses and a lot of business take place.

The official jury distributes 11 awards and the public is invited to vote in 3 other categories like Best Feature Film, Best Short Film and Best Documentary.

Photo: Catraca Livre

Photo: Catraca Livre

Some of the industry’s most important names have already been to FestRio promoting their work: directors Roman Polanski, Costa-Gavras, Tom Tykwer, Dario Argento, Leos Carax, Im Sang-soo, João Pedro Rodrigues, Masahiro Kobayashi, Louis Malle, Carlos Saura, John Waters, Peter Greenaway, Stephen Frears, François Ozon, Todd Solondz and Paolo e Vittorio Taviani; also movie starts like Jeanne Moureau, Samuel L. Jackson, Marisa Paredes, Jeremy Irons, Forest Whitaker, Kylie Minogue, Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Rampling, Ricardo Darín, Danny Glover, Harvey Keitel, Helen Mirren, Isabelle Huppert, Jane Birkin, among many others.

One of the hot topics this year is a Virtual Reality Exhibit that will have five total immersion experiences. One of them is the French film “Altération”, a trip to the future based on the study of the dreams.

To follow the program, addresses and other additional information, please refer to the official website: http://www.festivaldorio.com.br/

 

03 de Oct de 2017

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