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This review was originally published on October 26, 2024 as a part of our Middleburg Film Festival coverage.

I’m Still Here, Walter Salles’ latest film, is all about the profoundness of feeling in an unstable, tumultuous time, and how it rocks the boat of a seemingly stable family. The Brazilian film is a family drama wrapped in a political story. It’s focused primarily on Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) and her five children after her husband, Rubens (Selton Mello) — a former congressman who was ousted when the Brazilian Military Dictatorship took over — is disappeared in 1971. Written by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega, I’m Still Here is an evocative, nuanced portrait of family and the lasting imprint of politics.

I'm Still Here is set during the early 1970s military dictatorship in Brazil, focusing on the Paiva family. As the regime intensifies, Rubens, Eunice, and their five children live in an open house by the beach in Rio.

New films by Agnieszka Holland, Agnes Varda and Isabel Coixet have been added to the official lineup of the upcoming Berlin Film Festival, along with special screenings of directorial debuts by British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor and “Narcos” star Wagner Moura of Brazil.

The Berlinale added 11 titles to its competition slate Thursday, representing countries such as China, Norway, Mongolia and Israel. Of the 18 competition titles selected so far, eight are directed by women, including festival opener “The Kindness of Strangers,” by Danish director Lone Scherfig.

Holland’s eagerly anticipated “Mr. Jones,” starring James Norton and Vanessa Kirby, will have its world premiere in Potsdamer Platz. The politically charged film centers on the real-life Welsh journalist Gareth Jones (Norton), whose reporting uncovered a deadly famine in Ukraine in the 1930s.

Another famine-themed film heading to Berlin is Ejiofor’s “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind,” which was recently acquired by Netflix and...

The Berlin Film Festival has added movies by Agnès Varda, Agnieszka Holland, Hans Petter Moland, Isabel Coixet and Wang Quan’an to its competition programme. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s directorial debut The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind will play in the Berlinale Special strand. Scroll down for the full list of additions to the batch of films already announced for the competition.

Coixet’s (The Bookshop) black-and-white feature Elisa & Marcela, the true-story of two women who got married in Spain in 1901 after one adopted a male identity, will likely receive an extra dose of media attention given that it is a Netflix acquisition, marking the streaming giant’s first film to screen in competition in Berlin. Festival director Dieter Kosslick has previously said that competition films must have a theatrical release.

Among other highlights announced today are James Norton and Vanessa Kirby starrer Mr. Jones from Polish director Agnieszka Holland and Italian mafia pic Piranhas,...

Sônia Braga is outstanding as a woman refusing to be forced out of her Recife apartment in this powerful Brazilian satire

A performance of tremendous wit, vitality and lusty defiance by Sônia Braga drives Brazilian film-maker Kleber Mendonça Filho’s remarkable second feature. A portrait of a 65-year-old woman refusing to be bullied out of her seafront apartment by developers, Aquarius is both a powerful celebration of its independent heroine and a scathing satire on institutional corruption. Like the writer/director’s fable-inflected 2004 short Vinil Verde, it is a film fascinated by the magical power of scratchy old records, of mother-daughter bonds, of transformational living spaces. And as with his first feature, Neighbouring Sounds, it presents a community haunted by artefacts of the past and the architecture of change, social and personal conflicts seamlessly intertwined.

Retired music critic Clara (Braga) lives in the 1940s-built Aquarius apartment block in upmarket Recife.

Title: Aquarius Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho Starring: Sonia Braga, Maeve Jinkings, Irandhir Santos, Humberto Carrão and Soraide Coleto The movie acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival, ‘Aquarius,’ discusses an incredibly timely topic: the way real estate investments will stop at nothing to speculate. The Brazilian drama, directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho, has a majestically intense Sonia Braga bringing to life the story of Clara, the last resident of Aquarius building who refuses to sell her apartment to a construction company that intends to replace it with a new edifice. She is a strong, dignified, self-sufficient woman who has contrasted cancer all her life. She is a fighter and does not [ Read More ]

The post Aquarius Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Sônia Braga with her Aquarius director Kleber Mendonça Filho Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Aquarius stars a magnificent Sônia Braga with Thaia Perez, Maeve Jinkings (Gabriel Mascaro's Neon Bull), Humberto Carrão, Irandhir Santos (Neighboring Sounds with Jinkings), Zoraide Coleto, Paula De Renor, Fernando Teixeira, Buda Lira, and Barbara Colen.

Kleber Mendonça Filho talks to me about Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick in Alexander Payne's Election, John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy, Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann links, the madeleines, colours, creating the perfect tactile version of a childhood memory, and Diego as the international evil.

Sônia Braga as Clara

Aquarius begins with a get-together in 1980. A large family celebrates the birthday of Aunt Lucía (Thaia Perez), an elegant woman in a pink suit who has led a full active life and smiles benevolently at the children's attempt to honour her by containing her in a nutshell. We get a...

Aquarius at The Paris Theatre in New York Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

The day after the Us premiere at the New York Film Festival of Kleber Mendonça Filho's fiery Aquarius, Sônia Braga spoke with me up at Lincoln Center on the magic in the film, reading the script, Clara's hair, Bette Davis in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve, Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, forming tribes and the influence her mother, Maria Braga Jaci Campos, had on her costumes when she starred with William Hurt and Raúl Juliá in Héctor Babenco's Kiss Of The Spider Woman. With the festival in full swing, Eugène Green, director of Son Of Joseph (Le Fils De Joseph) crossed our path, Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan slunk by and Kent Jones waved hello.

Sônia Braga: "… when I read the screenplay, I went to another dimension where I found Clara." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Clara (Braga), a music critic,...

Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho’s controversial “Aquarius” continues to stir big emotions, even months after its debut at the Cannes Film Festival.

At a special preview of the film at New York City’s Angelika Theatre on Thursday evening, the film was greeted by a group of protesters who turned out in support of the film and its creator, who has been very vocal about his opposition to Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff’s recent impeachment — perceived as many to be part of a coup — and continuing a conversation started earlier this year.

Read More: ‘Aquarius’ Political Controversy Clouds Brazil’s Oscar Submission

The film follows 65-year-old Brazilian widow Clara (Sonia Braga), a former music journalist who is set on living out the rest of her days in the apartment complex where she grew up. Although she pledges to stay in the apartment until she dies, her plans are waylaid...

Aquarius Vitagraph Films Reviewed by: Harvey Karten, Shockya Grade: B- Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho Written by: Kleber Mendonça Filho Cast: Sônia Braga, Maeve Jinkings, Bárbara Colen, Irandhir Santos, Humberto Carrão, Zoraide Coleto Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 9/26/16 Opens: October 14, 2016 If you did not know that “Aquarius” was made before Donald Trump’s campaign heated up, you might swear that the film is a thinly veiled satire aimed at the Republican nominee. In 1986, after a five-year struggle to avoid eviction, tenants of a 15-story building on New York’s Central Park South owned by Trump won the right to stay in their rent-controlled and rent-stabilized apartments. The tenants are [ Read More ]

The post Aquarius Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Aquarius producer Emilie Lesclaux and director Kleber Mendonça Filho with Anne-Katrin Titze in the Museum of Modern Art sculpture garden for Neighboring Sounds Photo: Jytte Jensen

Kleber Mendonça Filho's volatile ode to the private and the public, stars Sônia Braga with Thaia Perez, Maeve Jinkings, Humberto Carrão, Irandhir Santos, Zoraide Coleto, Paula De Renor, Fernando Teixeira, Buda Lira, and Barbara Colen.

Before the Us premiere at the New York Film Festival, the director/writer and I spoke about Brazilian society, outside/inside, Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick in Alexander Payne's Election, shooting wide, sense of place, Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann associations and John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy, the ever present madeleines, creating the perfect tactile version of a childhood memory, and Diego as the international evil in Aquarius.

Sônia Braga as Clara: "That's where she lives, that's where she has lived and that's what she is trying to keep.

“Aquarius” follows the 65-year-old Brazilian widow Clara (Sonia Braga), a former music journalist who’s living out her retirement in the apartment complex where she grew up. Clara pledges to stay in the apartment until she dies, but her plans become complicated when young real estate developer Diego (Humberto Carrão) tries to push her out of her home so that he can transform the forties-era building into a luxury condo. Though the other residents have all vacated, Clara refuses to move, and thus begins a war of attrition between herself and her corporate enemies to see who will blink first. Watch the film’s trailer below.

Read More: Cannes Review: Sonia Braga Gives a Brilliant Performance in ‘Aquarius’

The film is written and directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho. A former journalist and critic, Filho eventually transitioned into being a director, experimenting with a host of fiction and documentary styles and...

The staggeringly accomplished debut feature by Brazilian critic-turned-director Kleber Mendonça Filho, Neighboring Sounds, announced the arrival of a remarkable new talent in international cinema. Clearly recognizable as the work of the same director, Mendonça’s equally assertive follow-up, Aquarius, establishes his authorial voice as well as his place as one of the most eloquent filmic commentators on the contemporary state of Brazilian society.

Like its predecessor, Aquarius is set in Recife, a city bordering the Atlantic in the northeastern part of the country, and its narrative is also split into three chapters that begin after a prologue of black-and-white photographs. These depict the recent history of the region and indicate that the realities portrayed in the film belong to long-standing and still-ongoing developments. In this regard, Aquarius could be described as a prequel to Neighboring Sounds. Whereas the latter took place within the insulated, paranoid world of the gated and CCTV-monitored high-rises along the coast,...