04/09/2024 - VENICE 2024: With sensitivity and respect, Marianna Brennand brings to light the horrifying practice of sexual abuse of little girls in an Amazon rainforest village

Jamilli Correa in Manas

Manas [+see also:
trailer
interview: Marianna Brennand
film profile], the first fiction feature by Brazilian filmmaker Marianna Brennand, selected in competition at the 21st Giornate degli Autori of the Venice Film Festival, leaves you stunned – for the story it tells, for how it tells it and for the piercing performances of its actors. The fruit of a decade-long research on the sexual abuse of minors in some villages in the Amazonian forest, Brennand (who graduated in cinema at the University of California and is already a documentarian) brings to light a horrifying reality with her film, that of the island of Marajó, in the north of Brazil, where the sexual exploitation and abuse of little girls and teenagers, at home and out, is the norm, something tacitaly admitted because, as some say, “it will pass”.

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The protagonist of Manas is Marcielle, known as Tielle (the extraordinary newcomer Jamilli Correa). She’s 13 and at the beginning, she seems to be leading a happy life with her family – her mother (pregnant), her father, two brothers and a little sister – in a wooden hut on the river, between school, church, and soap operas on TV. The conspicuous belly she shows to her classmate is the first sign of something going wrong in this community, but after that, everything carries on as normal: games with friends, swims in the river, family dinners. That is until her father Marcílio (Rômulo Braga) starts focusing his attention on Tielle, who is in the midst of puberty. Under the dazed and powerless gaze of her mother Danielle (Fátima Macedo), Marcílio invites his daughter to share his bed (the hammock where the girl usually sleeps has mysteriously been torn) and then teaches her how to use a rifle. But after a hunting trip in which she and her father remain alone in the forest, Tielle will never be the same again: her eyes change, her smile fades from her face.

“Some things can’t be changed”, the girl is told when she looks to rebel against her fate. She would like to go back to sleeping in her hammock, but all her attempts to fix it are sabotaged: she has no escape. Thus begins for Tielle a progressive loss of innocence, which will bring her to also offer sexual favours to the men aboard the commercial barge where she goes to sell shrimp. Because everyone does it, her best friend included. But there is a policewoman, Aretha (Dira Paes), that these prohibited traffics don’t escape, and who has more than a few suspicions about Marcílio’s deviant behaviour at home, and the latter starts to also take Tielle’s younger sister to the forest. And where the law doesn’t reach, the courage of an abused little girl does.

“Manas”, in Portuguese, means “sisters”. Indeed, this is a film about sisterhood, in which women, especially the younger ones, look to protect each other. They don’t all react the same way: for an older sister who has saved herself by running away from home, there is a mother who cannot break the chains of abuse, but perhaps she just needs help. The director makes the spectator feel what the protagonist feels, brings them to feel empathy for her, in a crescendo of tension that never lets up. There are no explicit sex scenes or scenes of violence, the abuse is never shown in front of the camera. That wouldn’t be necessary, everything is clear. This choice from Brennand demonstrates a rare sensitivity and respect towards all the young women who are victims of abuse, from whom she has collected testimonies during her long years of research.

Manas was produced by Brazilian outfit Inquietude and co-produced by Globo Filmes, Canal Brasil, Pródigo and by Portuguese company Fado Filmes. Bendita Film Sales handles international sales.

(Translated from Italian)

Photogallery 02/09/2024: Venice 2024 - Manas

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Marianna Brennand
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