In this mysterious docudrama about a village in north-eastern
Brazil, a young man hears the voice of his dead father at a moonlit jungle waterfall
This is a mysterious ethno-fictional fable of the indigenous Krahô people in north-eastern Brazil; it was a prizewinner at Cannes last year for Brazilian-born Renée Nader Messora, who has been researching and working with the Krahô peoples for over a decade, and Portuguese co-director João Salaviza. They use non-professionals and shape their devised fictions around real situations; the result is something shimmeringly strange.
Ihjãc (Henrique Ihjãc Krahô, effectively playing himself) is deeply disturbed by unresolved feelings about the death of his father. Troubled by a dream, he comes to a moonlit waterfall in the jungle where he hears his father’s voice, calmly and conversationally rebuking him for having failed to carry out all the funeral rituals that would allow him to depart for the next life. It is a strange and beautiful scene. Rightly or not, I found myself thinking of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, especially when these requirements are finally arranged toward the film’s end, and they include “funeral baked meats”.