The Absence That Moves Us
Documentary or fiction? Actors or characters? A recording of real life or scenes? Did it really happened or was it all staged? - This is the first film by acclaimed stage director Christiane Jatahy, with cinematography by Walter Carvalho and produced by Tambellini Filmes. The film is about the subtle boundary between reality and fiction. On Christmas's Eve, during twelve hours straight and in a single location, five actors were filmed uninterruptedly by three hand-held cameras. They were waiting for someone. They wonder if he will ever come. The reunion of these five friends, the absences, the joys and the pains are shared by all at the peak of tension. The film within a film reveals itself. The main purpose of the film is to probe deeply into human complexities. To expose each of the actors through an alteration of their emotional states: the web of subtle, emotional relationships among individuals in a group of very close friends. The recording of this radical encounter also brings back memories of a generation who is presently in their forties. Born after the military putsch, this generation experienced their childhood right through a dictatorial regime, a masked dictatorship though, fed by the support by from the medium class, in times where what was really happening was not supposed to be revealed; in short, a generation who lived inside a bubble, with no political education and no rights to their own biography. A generation that believed what was said in soap operas and TV commercials and raised themselves with little freedom of learning and thinking. Daily exposed to the mediocrity of media products imported from the USA, the children of the Brazilian dictatorship very often had politically engaged parents who passed to military grandparents the responsibility of their upbringing and education. Today, fully conscious of this situation, this generation exposes itself with braveness and anguish.
