Do black people want redress for the harm caused by slavery? May they “return” to Africa! It is on this absurd theory that the scenario of Presidential decree, a dystopian film that denounces the very real and current problems of racism in Brazil.
The first feature film by Lazaro Ramos, an actor very famous in Brazil and recognized abroad for his role in Madame Satan (2002), has been screened in several international festivals, notably in Moscow or Memphis, but still has no commercial release date in Brazil.
Its distribution has been hampered by problems with Ancina, a government agency accused of “censorship” since the arrival of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in January 2019.
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“I don’t know if it’s bureaucracy or censorship, but both are harmful to the culture”, Lazaro Ramos said during a debate at the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival. It was during this festival that the film premiered in Brazil on Wednesday evening.
“The idea of this film is to educate people. I want the viewer, seeing it, to cry and say to themselves that they are capable of leading an anti-racist fight”, entrusted the director to AFP on the sidelines of this screening very applauded by the public.
“It was very moving”, said for his part Tais Araujo, wife of Lazaro Ramos and one of the main actresses of the film, alongside the actor and singer Seu Jorge and Alfred Enoch, Anglo-Brazilian known for his roles in the saga Harry potter or the series How To Get Away With Murder.
“My character is a black woman who, at the beginning, didn’t want to talk about racism, wanted to give herself the right to live, but had to dive in” head down in these problems, explains Tais Araujo.
And for good reason: the “presidential decree” in question in the film obliges all black people, or rather “with accentuated melanin”, as the government designates, to surrender to the authorities to be deported to Africa.
Some representatives of this fictitious government look like members of the Bolsonaro administration, and the film is full of references to the racist prejudices that are legion in Brazil, the last country in America to have abolished slavery, in 1888. .
In April, Sergio Camargo, president of the Palmares Cultural Foundation, a public institute supposed to promote Afro-Brazilian culture, called for a boycott of this feature film.
“It is a victimization and a defamatory attack on our president”, let go of this black leader who had hit the headlines in the past by claiming that slavery had been “beneficial for Afro-descendants”.
According to the film’s production, the distribution grant application was filed in November 2020, but the Ancine still hasn’t followed through a year later. L’Ancine said for its part that the request was “Analyzing”.
Another film screened at several festivals around the world experienced similar problems: Marighella, which tells the life of Carlos Marighella, one of the leaders of the armed struggle against the military dictatorship (1964-1985), a regime which Jair Bolsonaro continues to praise.
The film only hit theaters last month, after seeing its claims twice rejected by Ancina in 2019.
In July of that same year, President Bolsonaro had already indicated that he wanted “filter” Brazilian cinema productions.
Despite all these difficulties, Lazaro Ramos does not intend to give up: “We are not going to stop addressing these important themes, to reflect on how this country was built.”