- Directed by: Kleber Mendonça Filho
- Cast: Bárbara Colen, Sônia Braga, Udo Kier
A man is judged by the evil he does, not the good.
from the movie
Bacurau is a small fictional settlement in ‘another imaginary’ municipality of Serra Verde in Brazil. The people of this remote backcountry are shaken by a series of mysterious and horrifying events. At first, the settlement disappears from the online maps; a flying saucer-shaped drone is hovering over the town; and finally, a mass killing of town people.
Teresa: Sleep with me tonight?
from the movie
Pacote: You’re not in mourning?
Teresa: I’m not religious.
The movie depicts the apocalyptic doom – as in the “Mad Max” series – or evil in historical and social perspective rather than religious – biblical – means. Under the genre-blurring strangeness and violence with the Western and SF flavors, viewers are invited to the historical journey to the enslavements, colonialist exploitation, indigenous massacre, and deep-rooted racism.
The great photo shooting of landscapes and the very natural acting of people in Bacurau are mixed with the somewhat shaky acting of American killers and increasing unbalanced shooting scenes. But this awkwardness of mismatching directing actually strengthens our historical consciousness of sociopolitical struggles and the sensitivity of the issues.
Bacurau is a Portuguese word for a nightjar or a nighthawk.
Scriptorium 