It's 1939, and the world is teetering on the edge. On the day World War Two breaks out, a group of people discuss the state of the world in a little bar on a South American beach, far away from the front. A Brazilian communist faces off against a Portuguese capitalist; an Argentinian fascist against a Trotskyist French actress. On this remote sandbank, they all defend their ideologies that have been overtaken by reality. Parallels with the contemporary rise of extremist ideologies in Brazil (and around the globe) are hard to ignore. The theatricality of this allegorical tale, with its unity of time and place, and highly symbolic characters, is disrupted by the extremely cinematic nature of the landscape in which the discussions are held. Paixões recorrentes was shot entirely on Ilha do Mel, a small island and nature preserve on the Paranaguá Bay estuary in southern Brazil.