The medium-length film Ash Wednesday, a musical João Pedro Prado directed alongside Bárbara Santos, was one of the ten films selected for the Perspektive Deutsches Kino, the competitive section of up-and-coming German cinema at the Berlinale. Ash Wednesday ist the first film in the history of the section with an entirely Brazilian cast and spoken – in fact, sung! – in Portuguese. The full press release can be read on the Berlinale website.
The announcement becomes emblematic having arrived the morning after an attempted coup d’etat in Brasília. The supporters of the former president of Brazil are not only opposed to democracy, but to every form of social justice and diversity possible therein. It hurts them, barbarians, to watch the return of a government that promotes art and culture in its plurality, culture that has been asphyxiated in the last four years by systematic cuts and policy dismantling that have weakened a cinema that was flourishing with international recognition, including in Berlin.
It is also tragically ironic that Ash Wednesday, a film about the daily brutality of the military police against the Black and marginalised population of the country, is selected one day after the world watched the law enforcement of the Federal District act as an accomplice to the far-right terrorists who attacked republican institutions. The reconstruction of Brazil starts now, but there is a lot of work ahead.
Synopsis: In a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Demétria waits for her daughter on the last day of Carnival. But a brutal police raid seals the fate of the two women. Set to Brazilian rhythms, this short musical addresses racism and other social conflicts.
The film stars Uriara Maciel, Ronni Maciel, Jefferson Preto and João Eduardo Albertini. It is a production of Schuldenberg Films in co-production with the Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. It was funded by the French film festival War on Screen and the German Ministry of Culture (BKM).