Bacurau
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; ) is a 2019
Weird West Weird West, also known as Weird Western, is a term used for the hybrid genres of fantasy Western, horror Western and science fiction Western, combining elements of the Western genre with those of fantasy, horror and science fiction. The ter ...
ern film written and directed by
Kleber Mendonça Filho Kleber Mendonça Filho (; born 22 November 1968) is a Brazilian film director, screenwriter, producer, and critic. Early life With a degree in journalism from the Federal University of Pernambuco, Kleber Mendonça Filho began his career as a fil ...
and Juliano Dornelles. It stars
Sônia Braga Sônia Maria Campos Braga (; born 8 June 1950) is a Brazilian actress. She is known in the English-speaking world for her Golden Globe Award–nominated performances in ''Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985 film), Kiss of the Spider Woman'' (1985) a ...
,
Udo Kier Udo Kierspe (born 14 October 1944), known professionally as Udo Kier, is a German actor. Known primarily as a character actor, he has appeared in more than 220 films in both leading and supporting roles throughout Europe and the Americas. He has ...
, Bárbara Colen, Thomas Aquino, Silvero Pereira, and Karine Teles. The film, a co-production between Brazil and France, revolves around Bacurau, a fictional small town in the Brazilian sertão that is beset by strange happenings following the death of its matriarch, Carmelita ( Lia de Itamaracá), at the age of 94. The film had its world premiere at the main competition for the
Palme d'Or The (; ) is the highest prize awarded to the director of the Best Feature Film of the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festiv ...
at the
2019 Cannes Film Festival The 72nd annual Cannes Film Festival took place from 14 to 25 May 2019. Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu served as jury president for the main competition. South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho won the , the festival's top prize, fo ...
, winning the Jury Prize.


Plot

In the near future, the people of Bacurau, an impoverished, rural settlement in the fictional municipality of Serra Verde, in western
Pernambuco Pernambuco ( , , ) is a States of Brazil, state of Brazil located in the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast region of the country. With an estimated population of 9.5 million people as of 2024, it is the List of Brazilian states by population, ...
, gather for the funeral of Carmelita, an elderly woman seen as the matriarch of the community. Her granddaughter Teresa, now a young woman, returns to town after many years for the occasion, and to deliver some medicine. In the following days, the village experiences a sequence of strange events, including the town inexplicably disappearing from online maps and satellite images, loss of mobile phone signal, sightings of a
UFO An unidentified flying object (UFO) is an object or phenomenon seen in the sky but not yet identified or explained. The term was coined when United States Air Force (USAF) investigations into flying saucers found too broad a range of shapes ...
-shaped drone and an unnamed couple from
southern Brazil The South Region of Brazil ( ) is one of the five regions of Brazil. It includes the states of Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Catarina, and covers , being the smallest region of the country, occupying only about 6.76% of the territory of ...
passing through town on motorcycles. There is an ongoing dispute over water rights from the local river, with water being dammed upstream in a corrupt scheme masterminded by the wealthy mayor of Serra Verde, Tony Junior. He visits Bacurau in an attempt to secure its residents' votes in an upcoming election with old food and tattered books, but no water; the townspeople all hide to avoid him. A tanker truck of water finally arrives for the town, but it has been riddled with bullets. When horses stampede through town, two local men are sent to investigate the nearby farm from where they presumably escaped and find the family that owned it murdered. As they attempt to leave the property, they too are murdered, by the southern motorcyclists. This couple then meets again up with a group of mostly American foreigners led by Michael ( a German living in the United States for over 40 years). The couple is chastised for killing the two men, as killing them deprived the foreigners of two chances to score "points." After receiving unheard instructions through earpieces, the foreigners kill the couple and then argue over who earned the points for their deaths. The foreigners begin hunting the townspeople, and Pacote, Teresa's former lover, seeks out Lunga, a revolutionary protecting and being sheltered by the townspeople. Pacote convinces Lunga to join his fight against the foreigners. As the townspeople arm themselves, the foreigners kill a nine-year-old boy and cut off the town's electricity. The following morning, as the foreigners go hunting, they are gradually overpowered and killed by the locals, with the exception of Michael, who ends up captured. Tony Junior shows up to collect the foreigners in a luxury minibus. When he sees that the townspeople have won, he denies knowing the foreigners until the captured Michael yells to him for help. The mayor is sent away to die in the desert, half-naked and tied up to a donkey, while Michael is buried alive in an underground cell while shouting "this is only the beginning."


Cast

*
Sônia Braga Sônia Maria Campos Braga (; born 8 June 1950) is a Brazilian actress. She is known in the English-speaking world for her Golden Globe Award–nominated performances in ''Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985 film), Kiss of the Spider Woman'' (1985) a ...
as Domingas *
Udo Kier Udo Kierspe (born 14 October 1944), known professionally as Udo Kier, is a German actor. Known primarily as a character actor, he has appeared in more than 220 films in both leading and supporting roles throughout Europe and the Americas. He has ...
as Michael * Bárbara Colen as Teresa * Thomás Aquino as Pacote / Acácio * Silvero Pereira as Lunga * Thardelly Lima as Tony Jr. * Rubens Santos as Erivaldo * Wilson Rabelo as Plínio * Carlos Francisco as Damiano *
Luciana Souza Luciana Souza (born 12 July 1966) is a Brazilian jazz singer and composer who also works in bossa nova, pop, classical and chamber music. She won a Grammy Award in 2007, and has been nominated for seven others, most recently in 2024. Souza is con ...
as Isa * Karine Teles as Foreigner * Julia Marie Peterson as Julia


Production


Filming

''Bacurau'' was filmed in the village of Barra in the municipality of
Parelhas Parelhas is a Municipalities of Brazil, municipality in the states of Brazil, state of Rio Grande do Norte in the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast region of Brazil. See also *List of municipalities in Rio Grande do Norte References

Mun ...
and in the rural area of the municipality of
Acari Mites are small arachnids (eight-legged arthropods) of two large orders, the Acariformes and the Parasitiformes, which were historically grouped together in the subclass Acari. However, most recent genetic analyses do not recover the two as ea ...
, at the Sertão do Seridó region, in
Rio Grande do Norte Rio Grande do Norte (, , ) is one of the states of Brazil. It is located in the northeastern region of the country, forming the northeasternmost tip of the South American continent. The name literally translates as "Great Northern River", refe ...
, with scenes shot in the Gargalheiras dam. The film crew visited over 20 cities in the Northeast countryside to find the appropriate filming location. The crew shot 12-hour days for 8 weeks. Cinematographer Pedro Sotero worked on the film alongside Mendonça and Dornelles for a third time, following '' Neighboring Sounds'' (2012) and '' Aquarius'' (2016). The film production chose to use a Panavision Anamorphic C-series lenses along with a 4:3 digital sensor for the compact and a reliable ARRI Alexa Mini. This stylistic choice became expensive, with the specific lenses not being sold in Brazil, the crew had to import them from both the United States and France. For the directors it helped "create this tension between a very Brazilian film and a certain distortion that you associate with classic American films. I think we were very lucky to make the film exactly the way we wanted it to make." A self-proclaimed cinephile, Kleber Mendonça Filho stated in an interview that the cinematographers for the film drew inspiration from several sources, including both 1970's American western style films and Italian westerns from the 1960's. ''Bacurau'' departed from several cinematographic norms during its production. Among these include the use of zooms and diopters which struck many cinephiles as somewhat of a call back to older filming techniques. Another stylistic departure from what many consider to be standard in the filming industry was the lack of a steady camera on set, with the directors opting to use tracks instead: "I have nothing against it; it's an interesting tool. But for this film, we wanted to move the camera using only tracks. By the end of the shoot, the gaffer said we had laid down 1,300 meters of tracks for this film, in eight and a half weeks' shoot."


Reception

On review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, ''Bacurau'' holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "Formally thrilling and narratively daring, ''Bacurau'' draws on modern Brazilian sociopolitical concerns to deliver a hard-hitting, genre-blurring drama." On
Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 82 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "Universal acclaim". Barry Hertz of ''
The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Newspapers in Canada, Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in Western Canada, western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of more than 6 million in 2024, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on week ...
'' gave ''Bacurau'' a favorable review, saying it was a "fiery anti-colonialism polemic with so much on its mind that you'll likely come out of it feeling as dazed as the titular village's people," while Monica Castillo of
RogerEbert.com ''RogerEbert.com'' is an American film review website that archives reviews written by film critic Roger Ebert for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' and also shares other critics' reviews and essays. The website, underwritten by the ''Chicago Sun-Times ...
praised its "twists and turns." Additionally, ''Bacurau'' received the 'critic's pick' of ''The New York Times'' in March 2020, and was described as "engimatic, exhilarating, and otherworldly". David Friend of ''
The Canadian Press The Canadian Press (CP; , ) is a Canadian national news agency headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. Established in 1917 as a vehicle for Canadian newspapers to exchange news and information, The Canadian Press has been a privately-held company, pr ...
'' highlighted Udo Kier's performance saying it was "one of his best villainous roles."


Release

It was released by Vitrine Filmes in Brazil and SBS Distribution in France. Its North American release was interrupted by the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, prompting the distributor Kino-Lorber to seek alternate means. It created a "virtual cinema" distribution model in which it partnered with some 150 independent theaters in North America. The first run of the film streams in an exclusive limited release window through the theaters' websites. Kino-Lorber shares the revenues with the theaters.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bacurau 2019 films 2019 drama films 2019 science fiction films 2010s Brazilian films 2010s English-language films 2010s French films 2010s Portuguese-language films 2010s science fiction drama films Brazilian science fiction drama films Contemporary Western films English-language Brazilian films English-language French films English-language science fiction drama films Films directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho Films set in Brazil Films shot in Rio Grande do Norte French science fiction drama films Cannes Jury Prize winners