DRY GROUND BURNING (MATO SECO EM CHAMAS) Discovery

Screening to be followed by a conversation with director Joana Pimenta.

In the center of this expansive vision of modern Brazil are two sisters ruling the peripheral city of Ceilândia, Brazil. Chitara and Léa lead a fearsome all-female biker gang, operating a black-market gasoline enterprise by illegally siphoning oil from the militarized government and selling it to other local bikers. Directors Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós seamlessly meld aspects of documentary and speculative fiction, creating a transformative hybrid between legends and realities in an impressionistic, dystopian world of smoke, fire and oil. Joana Darc Furtado and Léa Alves da Silva are exceptional as alternate versions of themselves, one moment reminiscing over old stories and the next defending their turf with guns blazing. While its electrifyingly epic scope evokes the silhouette of the postapocalyptic canon, it’s the refutation of authoritarianism – as we ride through the Sol Nascente slums then pivot to a celebratory Bolsonaro rally – that stands out as daring, furious and radically resistant. –Anna Li