Suellen needs some money. She is a single mother raising a teenage son on the salary of a toll booth worker in an industrial Brazilian town. Her son’s father is out of the picture, and her live-in boyfriend does nothing but take from what little she has. Her solution to her financial woes is to join a gang of thieves who steal wristwatches from wealthy motorists. With this money, Suellen can pay for the most important thing in her life: her son’s conversion therapy.
Director Carolina Markowicz presents a cinematic study of intolerance and hypocrisy. In a town where confession and prayer relieve you of the sins of infidelity, theft, and judgment, no sin is greater than a boy wearing makeup and learning English so he can lip-sync to his favourite American singers. The narrow-minded Suellen considers the perception of others before her son’s happiness, leading her to make a series of rash decisions that will have fateful consequences for the both of them.
Maeve Jinkings, Kauan Alvarenga, Thomás Aquino, Aline Marta Maia, Isac Graça
Brazil/Portugal
2023
Panorama
In Portuguese with English subtitles
Violence
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
João Macedo, Chica Mendonça
Producer
Karen Castanho, Vega Luís, Urbano, Bianca Villar, Fernando Fraiha, Sandro Aguilar, Carolina Markowicz
Screenwriter
Carolina Markowicz
Cinematography
Luis Armando Arteaga
Editor
Lautaro Colace; Ricardo Saraiva
Production Design
Vicente Saldanha
Original Music
Filipe Derado
Director
Carolina Markowicz
Carolina Markowicz has written and directed six short films selected by more than 300 festivals and is the recipient of many awards. The Orphan premiered in Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight in 2018 and won the Queer Palm. Since 2021, Her debut feature, Charcoal, premiered at Toronto and San Sebastian in 2022.
Filmography: Charcoal (2022)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Inedia
Liz Cairns makes a mesmerizing feature debut that sees a young woman suffering from mysterious food allergies join a remote island community practicing alternative healing methods. She soon realizes that not everything is as it seems.
Oldboy
The second movie in Park's Vengeance Trilogy. Choi Min-sik stars as Dae Su, inexplicably held captive by he-knows-not-who for 15 years, and then, just as inexplicably, released. Not surprisingly, after all this time, he has only one thing on his mind...
Apocalypse in the Tropics
An Academy Award nominee for Edge of Democracy, Petra Costa returns with a fascinating take on how the Evangelical movement has taken Brazil by storm and worked with the right to undermine the constitutional separation of Church and State.
Ghosts of the Sea
Imagine an especially poetic true crime podcast about a sailor who built his own sailboat and lived on the high seas, but lost not one, but two wives along the way... Now imagine it told from the vantage point of his daughter: Ghosts of the Sea.