This is the story of Raquel who, to change her life, arrives in a remote village in Brazil.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
She attends the local church and befriends young evangelical girls who push her to deepen her spirituality. The young girl relives the pain of her deep traumas… the restrictive dictates of the Evangelical Church really do not suit her. She then falls into an agonizing spiral between faith, reason and madness. It is there that she has a dream and wakes up with the mission to spread a new feminist version of the Bible. Everyone runs away from the eccentric girl: it’s the devil himself, according to the people of the Church. Raquel will end up setting fire to the church and burning everything… but she won’t kill anyone!
Ah yes, I have to tell you: I have just given you the description of a film – a horrific comedy – in a country where you don’t trifle with religion!
We are at the Berlinale. Yes, yes, the big Berlin Film Festival. I am lucky to be among the heels selected for the Doc Toolbox at the Berlinale-European Film Market! It’s fashionable for our institutions (SODEC, MEDIA, FMC…) to give a helping hand to people of diversity and to women these days, and I take full advantage of it!
I spent two weeks with a wonderful program, it’s a bit like the Rolls-Royce of training. Don’t envy me too much since I did all that on Zoom.
With the cursed pandemic restrictions, all I saw of Berlin was the outline of my computer screen begging to be dusted!
Going back to the story of Raquel, the girl who set the church on fire, that was just a summary to give us some context, because we’re in film marketing training. Brazilian distributor Lidia Damatto explains the intricacies of designing a movie poster: a little blood on Raquel’s dress or halos around her head change the whole meaning of a poster. Even more complex, it explains how countries, depending on their culture, adapt the posters and trailers of films.
During these annual training sessions at one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world, we are told that, normally, bonds are forged between filmmakers from all over the world. We, this year’s cohort, were not so lucky. We seemed pretty lost, each behind his computer screen at impossible times, the jet lag not being able to accommodate us all. We were from all over the world, people of diversity to help us catch up with the lost time of inclusion. From Canada, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Young filmmakers who aspire to change the world, each in their own way, each with a project that forces them to open their eyes to another way of seeing the world. All this is no more than a village gathered on Zoom !
Changing the world is not easy for our Brazilian distributor and trainer Lidia Damatto. Their far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, cut them off altogether. More public funding for cinema and culture since his election: what is this business of funding works that will criticize him?
Lidia Damatto takes advantage of a short break to tell us little anecdotes about her work in the immaculate Brazil of President Bolsonaro. Brazilian cinema is dying and, to survive, producers have turned to private funding. It is therefore very important to put the names of all the contributors on the poster of the films, because the rich industrialists have to see their names everywhere when they finance films…
Oh darn ! Lidia is annoyed, she just noticed that on the movie poster Rachel 1.1, one of the funds comes from a friend of Bolsonaro, who financed his electoral campaign. Definitely, this controversial film which attacks the Evangelical Church will still attract problems for them. She begins to laugh in an almost nonchalant way and, in singsong English, adds: “We’re going to have a bad time when this film comes out. » At the same time, she brings out the popular phrase of the Brazilians which expresses so well the difficulty of living under the regime of their president: « Brazil is not for novices! » (Brazil is not for beginners.)
Lidia ends the short break on a note of hope: “We hope that Lula will soon be re-elected. »
PHOTO CARLA CARNIEL, REUTERS
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, was President of Brazil from 2003 to 2010.
Exactly, Lula… The next day, the presentation of the Toolbox was with The Intercept, the investigative journalistic platform created by Gleen Greenwald, ex-journalist of the Guardian at the origin of the revelations of Edward Snowden, and financed by the founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar. A box which has given itself the mission of “pursuing the quest for truth” in the world. It was thanks to an investigation by The Intercept that former Brazilian President Lula (2003-2010) was released from prison, proving his innocence.
Every time my screen goes blank after a Toolbox presentation, I think of all the meetings and conversations we missed while being on Zoom. Imagine all the stories I could have told you if I had been physically in Berlin.