CM 2021

FSA / Ancine 

Region Sud - Development Fund

Globo Filmes

Promenades Films

Macunaíma

Pitch video

Goals at CineMart Macuna&iacute;ma will be a film that combines a very creative way of approaching the Brazilian culture and reality with equally urgent social and humanitarian issues: the genocide of the indigenous people in Brazil today. Inspired by one of the most important books of the Brazilian literature and indigenous mythology from the North of the country, through a mix of realism and magic realism, this film will be a great adventure film and deserves an ambitious production and post-production designs which have their cost. CineMart is the perfect place and moment to find the right co-producers to complete this ambition. We are looking for partners with a special focus on Portugal, Netherland, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. We plan to produce animation and VFX in France, so the new partners we are looking for would join us mainly for production and post-production. As for France, we are looking for partners involved in the artistic process. We also want to meet sales agents and equity partners as we need all talents and forces to fit our artistic and production ambitions.We are confident to film in Brazil in 2022, and we already got a development support from a local grant and from Globo Filmes, which will potentially provide 30% of the budget. Felipe&rsquo;s last films were great achievements, making their world and European premieres at Sundance Film Festival Competition, Berlinale Generation 14plus and IFFR - Big Screen Competition. The idea is to go even deeper in the potential of Felipe&rsquo;s work on dealing with the indigenous theme in Brazil, bringing the folklore and the oral legends to the big screen, and also working with a team of indigenous artists like the actress, performer and activist Zahy Guajajra (our co-writer and future co-director). We are sure we will produce a very special film with a lot of enchantment for the audience and a strong social and ecological relevance. To enhance the relevance of the project, in 2022 the modernist Brazilian cultural movement, in which the original &ldquo;Macuna&iacute;ma&rdquo; book fits as a central masterpiece, will be celebrating 100 years. It will be a perfect film for a strong international career, and also a relevant film in our domestic cinematographic panorama.Synopsis In a village in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, near the border with Venezuela, an indigenous woman gives birth to a very dark skinned indigenous boy with large eyes. The boy is born big, almost 3 years old, and very quickly learns to speak. The people of the village suspect that he is the reincarnation of &ldquo;Macuna&iacute;ma&rdquo;, a mythological demigod of trickery and cleverness, and that he came to earth to bring bad luck to the village.Considered dangerous for being lazy and not acting like a &ldquo;real indigenous&rdquo;, Macuna&iacute;ma is sent to live in the woods close to the village. Sofar&aacute;, the young girlfriend of his brother, is put in charge to bring him food every night since Macuna&iacute;ma never learned to hunt. As we could expect, in these nocturnal meetings, Macuna&iacute;ma and Sofar&aacute; start a secret love story - where Sofar&aacute; shows him the power to transform herself in a on&ccedil;a (jaguar) and Macuna&iacute;ma shows her his power of transforming his body to look like anything he wants, even the blond blue-eyed stars from the telenovelas. It doesn&rsquo;t take long for Macuna&iacute;ma`s mother to discover what was happening between Macuna&iacute;ma and Sofar&aacute;, and the tribe, together, decides to send Macuna&iacute;ma away from the village surroundings, really far away deep in the Amazon rainforest. Macuna&iacute;ma&rsquo;s mission is to learn about his magical origins alone and to discover the magical beings that inhabit the other margin of the big Oraricoera river that crosses those lands.Living alone in the forest, Macuna&iacute;ma meets Ciara, a half-Goddess of the woods, who is now living among a group of ilegal miners who work in a camp in the forest. Macuna&iacute;ma falls in love with Ciara while understanding that his homeland is in danger because his tribe lives in an area considered a paradise for gold hunters. Macuna&iacute;ma decides to go back to his village to tell his family about that. Ciara gives him an amulet to never forget her. Trying to protect his village, Macuna&iacute;ma gets his amulet stolen by a group of messianic fanatics who control the illegal mining in the region.Macuna&iacute;ma decides to go to the big city to recover his amulet - a gift from his only true love - and to revenge his people. His two brothers and Sofar&aacute; decide to go with him. In the big city, the group discover a new world, full of machines, violence and with many indigenous people like them, living in the poor peripheries as low class workers. They decide to stay in a cheap hotel controlled by a curious couple: an old French singer called Vanessa, and a black woman called Sarah. Vanessa, ex-wife of a famous anthropologist, recognises the traces of the legend her ex-husband was always talking about in Macuna&iacute;ma and decides to help them confront the messianic fanatic leaders who have destroyed their village and stolen Macuna&iacute;ma's love amulet. From that moment on, our anti-hero has the feeling that maybe he is indeed the misfit-God the legends talked about.Director&rsquo;s Biography Felipe Bragan&ccedil;a just turned 40 last December. He was born in Rio and raised between the city historical center and the suburbs of Baixada Fluminense, where his family is from. He studied cinema in a public film school (Fluminense Federal University) and started writing and directing films in 2003, still as a student. Since then, he directed 4 features, 1 medium-length, 5 shorts and created a multimedia project (including a web-series and a graphic novel). His works are all based on the Brazilian culture and historical memories, dealing with a new form of magic realism to explore its layers. His works were all presented in festivals such as Cannes, IFFR, Berlinale, Locarno International Film Festival and Sundance. He&rsquo;s had retrospectives of his works in Paris (Jeu de Paume), Los Angeles (California Institute of the Arts) and Berlin (Arsenal and Wolf Kino). He also writes scripts for some filmmakers like Karim A&iuml;nouz (with whom he had his first professional experience in 2005, as director-assistant), Helv&eacute;cio Marins Jr. and Marina Meliande. Since 2009, Bragan&ccedil;a and Meliande, alongside another partner, have their independent film company based in Rio: Duas Mariola Filmes. Felipe is now living between Rio de Janeiro and Lisabon.

Duas Mariola Filmes

In the north of Brazil, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, a boy is born in an isolated indigenous village. His name is Macunaíma and the legends say he will change the course of history and save his people from disappearance.