Inferninho

Deusimar's bar is very special. The kind of place where someone in a grubby Mickey Mouse suit can sit alongside someone dressed up as Wolverine. Where the bartender wears a pink rabbit suit and the vocalist doesn’t quite make the notes. Gay, straight, drag queen or Disney fan: here people can live out their dreams to the full, surrounded by flashing Christmas lights and pink glitter trimmings.

The Portuguese word inferninho can be translated as 'little hell', and that's the name of this grubby nightclub. Deusimar wants to leave; her lover, the sailor Jarbas, wants to stay. When gangsters and project developers start getting involved with the bar, this safe haven for outsiders is suddenly in danger.

My Own Private Hell, a cooperative venture between a film collective and a like-minded theatre group, was originally conceived as a play and then a TV series. In the end it became this surrealistic film about dreams, love, identity and the importance of having a local bar where you feel at home.

Also see The Cannibal Club.