Part of Brazil’s rapidly building international film scene, VDF Connection, a new São Paulo-based consultancy, training and sales agency, will launch at the Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du Film with a Fantastic Cuts horror showcase and a second dedicated to titles from Brazilian state Minas Gerais.
VDF Connection has also helped organize a screening of “O Barulho da Noite,” the narrative feature debut of Brazil’s Eva Pereira which won three awards at the 2024 Los Angeles Brazilian Film Festival.
The company is founded by partners Mónica Trigo, a consultant and fest curator, and Javier Fernández, longtime head of Blood Window, Latin American mart-meet Ventana Sur’s pioneering genre platform.
Said Fernández: “VDF Connection is a new consulting and sales agency focused on connecting filmmakers and producers — from development to post-production — with international festivals and markets,”
“Our mission is to empower the global launch of audiovisual content, primarily from Brazil and Latin America, at a time when the Brazilian industry is gaining renewed momentum, especially with Brazil being honored as the Country of Honor at this year’s Marché du Film,” he added.
Focusing on Latin American genre – horror, sci-fi, thrillers – Fantastic Cuts will screen excerpts from five pix in post. The cut takes in “The Saint, Her Mother, Their Manor, and a Dove,” one of two productions at Cannes from on-the-rise auteur Cintia Domit Bittar, a scathing take on a religious materialist mindset in Brazil, “Profanity,” the latest from Chile’s Lucio Rojas, whose 2017 gorefest “Trauma” established him as one of the new kings of envelope pushing extreme horror, and “Love, Free Love,” from respected action movie/doc writer-directors Flavio Frederico and Mariana Pamplona (“São Paulo Heist”).
Fantastic Cuts unspools May 16. One day before, in coordination with VDF Connection, the Minas Gerais’ Sindicato da Indústria Audiovisual, the sector’s trade body of the central Brazilian state, will unveil nine new titles, split between docs and narrative movies.
Filmmakers such as Gabriel Martins, André Novais Oliveira and Belo Horizonte talent hub/production house Filmes de Plástico have already drawn attention. Cannes Minas Gerais’ showcase broadens the focus with titles such as “I Can’t Say His Name,”whose distribution is handled by O2 Play, the energetic distribution and sales arm of powerhouse O2 Filmes; “Maria the Mad Queen,” toplined by “Pulp Fiction” star María Madeiros, and “Making Room for Me,” a probing, elegantly shot doc feature.
“Eva Pereira is a rising Brazilian director whose work blends social themes with a distinct genre sensibility and ‘O Barulho da Noite’ is her most anticipated narrative feature debut, Fernández told Variety.. VDF hosts a Special Screening on May 14 at the Marché du Film.
FANTASTIC CUTS
“Dear Father,” (Topelberg Kleiinkop, Chile)
The first feature of heavy metal musician Topelberg Kleiinkop, a psychological thriller turning on Manuel, a lonely man’s whose repressed memories of childhood abuse in an orphanage gradually unravel. He finds redemption exposing a clerical cover-up of a child trafficking network run by the Catholic Church. Produced with Lucio Rojas, director of “Trauma” and Fantastic Cuts title “Profanity.”
Dear Father
“Love, Free Love,” (Flavio Frederico, Mariana Pamplona, Brazil)
“Our most authentic film,” says Frederico. A Brazilian man is told he’s the father of an 8-year old Argentine girl, hurries to Buenos Aires to meet her. But as soon as he arrives, she’s kidnapped. Mostly shot in Argentina, a “chilling thriller” says Pamplona, which racks up the tension to, however, a moving finish, set up at Frederico and Pamplona’s Kinoscópio.
“Profanity,” (Lucio Rojas,” Argentina, Chile)
Set in 2001 Argentina, a rural patrol is trapped in a farmhouse by an evil entity which one by one reduces its members to insanity. Filmed in Córdoba, Argentina by Fascinate Ent. with as an affecting line in gore from Rojas, famed for 2017’s savagely brutal “Trauma,” a critique of torture under Pinochet.
Profanity
“The Saint, Her Mother, Their Manor, and a Dove,” (Cintia Domit Bittar, Brazil)
Now in post, Bittar’s second feature at Cannes, again produced with Ana Paula Mendes at Novelo Filmes, alongside Festival do Rio Goes to Cannes’ “Virtuous Women.” Set in the ‘50s, a debt-laden widow battles to retain her manor-house by exploiting her supposedly saintly daughter curative powers. The film “responds to my auteurist interest in psychological horror and a more thought-provoking approach through its characters,” says Bittar.
“The World I Know There No Exists,” (Thiago Luciano, Brazil)
A zeitgeist inspired sci-fi suspense drama, set in a world where a syndrome has eliminated love. Liz joins an experiment that revives emotions via lucid memories. But something is wrong. The film “turns on “two issues that deeply unsettle me: the loss of love, empathy, the rise of AI that dominates affections, relationships, perception,” says Luciano. Luc Filmes and Zero Grau Filmes produce, with Trupe Filmes.
The World I Know There No Exists
MINAS GERAIS SPECIAL SCREENING
“Engineering a Crime,” (Fernanda Araújo)
In 2019, in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, a dam owned by the Vale mining company collapsed, causing 270 deaths. “This doc feature shows it wasn’t an accident but a crime,”says producer Julia Nogueira.
“Fantastic Folktales,” (Evandro Caixeta, João Gilberto Lara)
An intimate doc feature discovering extraordinary personal stories in the Minas Gerais countryside, true stories, or so their tellers insist, of lights in the sky, ape-like figures and seeming werewolves. With AI re-enactments, “something really fresh, a visually compelling, deeply human story from an unseen corner of the world,” Caixeta says.
“I Can’t Say His Name,” (Helvécio Ratton)
Despite her family’s opposition, a young woman takes to court her stepfather, who sexually abused her as a child. A true story first told in graphic novel, “No Abuses De Este Libro,” blending in the film live action and animation and targeting 12+ women and whole families, says Ratton. The accused was acquitted, hence the film’s title. O2 Play handles distribution.
“It’s a Wonderful Cheese,” (Lucas Assunção)
A broad audience family comedy in which a Minas homemade cheesemaker sets out to win a Best Cheese in the World reality TV contest in Brazil and the chance to represent Brazilian the global edition in France.
“Making Room for Me,” (Ursula Rösele)
Writer-director co-producer Rösele asks women, aged 53-85 – an age-group which had often voted for far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro – what they’ve kept silent in their lives. Well-respected producer Thiago Macedo, behind Sundance hit “Mars One,” will co-rep the film at Cannes.
“Maria, the Mad Queen,” (Elza Cataldo)
María Madeiros, one of Portugal’s greatest actors, plays Dona Maria 1 of Portugal, who lived in Brazil from 1808 to her death in 1816, popularly known as the Mad Queen. The film tells a different story of a far more engaging and charismatic character, and the danger of any sign of fragility in women holding positions of power, says Cataldo. Cataldo’s Persona Filmes produces with São Paulo’s Lira Filmes, Portugal’s The Stone and the Plot and Maria Zimbro.
“October,” (Vinicius Correia)
A doc feature following the daily lives of a group of volunteer firefighters who battle wildfires in Brazil, underscoring their social diversity, who develop a personal relationship with fire, and how fighting fire aids them put out their own internal fires, says Bruno Greco, an “October” producer.
“Resonances,” (Ana Amélia Arantes)
A documentary about pianist and educator Berenice Mengale, a woman “always ahead of her time,” says Arantes who gave up her career as a concert pianist to launch a free school, Fundacão de Educaçao Artistica, but not as a colonial transplant of European models. 62 years later, as it creates a Brazilian musical language, the Fundacão – and Berenice – are still vibrant innovative going concerns. From Tessitura Cultural, co-produced once more by São Paulo’s Lira Filmes.
“The Rosary Festival,” (Elisabeth Tavares)
An account of a 300-year-old festival in Itapecerica, in Minas Gerais, mixing Catholic and Afro-Brazilian Candomblé rituals, chants, dances, and, with string African roots, resilient beliefs, such as the need to ask for protection from potentially malignant spirits.
SCREENING OF ‘O BARULHO DA NOITE,’ FROM EVA PEREIRA
Actor-turned-director Eva Pereira’s first narrative feature, after docuseries “O Mistério de Nhemyrõ” (2020), on the high rate of indigenous suicide in Brazil, “O Barulho Da Noite” stars Emanuelle Araújo (Netflix’s “Last Voyeur”) as a wife and mother who lives on the family farm, feeling annulled and rendered invisible by her patriarchal devout husband. Then when he’s away, his alleged nephew turns up. Life changes a lot. Winner of best picture, screenplay and actress (Emanuelle Araújo) at the 2024 Los Angeles Brazilian Film Festival.
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