Medusa

Mariana is 21 and lives in a religious community, where she does her best to be the ideal woman: beautiful and docile. In the evenings, she and her friends express their religiosity in other ways. In town, they hunt down women with looser morals and teach them a lesson. When Mariana no longer fits the perfect picture herself, however, her belief is shaken.

This retelling of the Medusa myth places themes such as misogyny and beauty standards in a modern, stylised setting. The soundtrack is a mix of contemporary religious pop and synthesizers straight out of a 1970’s thriller, while the visuals are reminiscent of the work of Dario Argento. The disquieting events in the film, such as the paramilitary neighbourhood watch and the religious fanaticism, are unfortunately taken from real life, not the maker’s fantasy. Rocha da Silveira explicitly situates her dystopian parable in today’s Brazil, where the political reality is frightening enough as it is.