It is with a feeling of strangeness and unease that the film unfolds its stories about migration in opposite directions, from the countryside to the city (when Joana moves to São Paulo, near her sister Tania) and vice versa (when Flavia moves with Mara into her father’s abandoned house), with the vicissitudes that all changes bring. But it also opens the door to memory and the ghosts we carry wherever we go.
Separated by a semicolon, an orthographic sign that indicates a pause longer than a comma but not as deep as the period, CIDADE; CAMPO, by Juliana Rojas (back at Silvestre after IndieLisboa 2017), presents us with two narratives of displacement and spaces in transformation. Joana had to leave the countryside after surviving a heinous environmental crime in the interior of Minas Gerais and moves to São Paulo with her sister and grandson, whom she knew very little about. Flávia, meanwhile, leaves the city with her girlfriend to confront the memory following the death of her estranged father. The experiences of these women, who are immersed in different and parallel universes, are narrated with Rojas’ rigorous staging and at the same time an affectionate look at their lives. While memories and ghosts mingle with concrete and earth, a glimmer of love stubbornly survives. (Lucas Camargo de Barros)
