The movie
The Fever
Maya Da-Rin’s debut fiction feature is both a quietly devastating indictment of Bolsonaro’s Brazil and a loving portrait of one indigenous Desana family.
Length: 98 min
Country: Brazil, Germany, France
Language spoken: Tukano, Portuguese
Language subtitles: English
Cast: Régis Myrupu,
Rosa Peixoto,
Johnatan Sodré,
Kaisaro Jussara Brito,
Edmildo Vaz Pimentel
Director: Maya Da-Rin
Release date: 2019
Description
Winner of the FIPRESCI (International Critics) Prize and the Best Actor award at the Locarno International Film Festival last year, visual-artist-turned-filmmaker Maya Da-Rin’s debut fiction feature is both a quietly devastating indictment of Bolsonaro’s Brazil and a gentle, loving portrait of one indigenous Desana family torn between their livelihood in the port city of Manaus and their spiritual home in the rapidly disappearing rainforest. When port security guard Justino (non-pro Régis Myrupu) learns that his beloved daughter Vanessa (Rosa Peixoto) has been accepted to medical school in Brasilia, he develops an inexplicable fever. During the day, he fights to stay awake at work. During the night, a mysterious creature lurks in the nearby rainforest…
‘The Fever’s emotional beats never feel contrived. Instead, Da-Rin creates tension not as a simplistic pitting of the old against the new, so to speak, but as a constant generational negotiation and series of concessions motivated by familial love. The Fever is essential cinema, demanding empathy and understanding without pity or didacticism, and spotlighting indigenous people with the attention to cultural specifics that few films bother elaborating.’—Beatrice Loayza, Cinema Scope
‘The Fever’s emotional beats never feel contrived. Instead, Da-Rin creates tension not as a simplistic pitting of the old against the new, so to speak, but as a constant generational negotiation and series of concessions motivated by familial love. The Fever is essential cinema, demanding empathy and understanding without pity or didacticism, and spotlighting indigenous people with the attention to cultural specifics that few films bother elaborating.’—Beatrice Loayza, Cinema Scope
