Festival in SP and Rio presents more than 70 documentaries for free

The traditional documentary festival It’s All True reaches its 29th edition this year, presenting 77 productions including feature films, medium films and short films from 34 countries. The event is free and starts this Wednesday (3) in São Paulo and on Thursday (4), in Rio de Janeiro. The program runs until April 14th.

The opening film of the festival in São Paulo is the British documentary The Competitor, by Clair Titley, unpublished in Latin America. The film tells the story of a Japanese man who spent 15 months naked, in an apartment, incommunicado, in front of the cameras of a reality show. During confinement, he had to fill out contest coupons to win what he needed to survive – food, clothes and appliances – until he reached the goal of 1 million dollars.

The opening session in Rio de Janeiro will present the documentary A Movie for Beatrice, by Helena Solberg, the only female filmmaker in new cinema. The film seeks to answer the question “How are women in Brazil?”

The exhibition does not have a specific theme, but one of the highlights this year are the productions focused on the literary universe with documentaries about writers such as Verissimo [dirigido por Angelo Defanti], Antonio Candido – Final Notes [de Eduardo Escorel] It is Fernanda Young- I’m out of control [de Susanna Lira]. There are also films about political figures like Brizola [de Marco Abujamra] and about filmmakers like Fellini: Confidences Revisited (by Jean-Christophe Rosé) and My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (by Mark Cousins).

Cultural repatriation

Another subject that will appear in this year’s edition is cultural repatriation, the theme of the documentary Natterer Treasure, by filmmaker Renato Barbieri. The new work by Barbieri, known for his films Purity and Servitudepresents the story of naturalist Johann Natterer, member of an Austrian expedition who landed in Brazil in 1817 accompanying the Archduchess Maria Leopoldina, who was the first wife of Dom Pedro I.

In the 18 years he was in Brazil, Natterer collected more than 55 thousand objects, assembling the largest ethnographic collection on indigenous peoples in Brazil, with more than 2,300 pieces from 68 indigenous peoples.

This material was practically all sent abroad, to form the collections of the Natural History Museum and the Weltmuseum Wien, both in Austria. Only 90 pieces from this collection, which he presented to Emperor Dom Pedro II, remained in Brazil, at the National Museum, in Rio de Janeiro. However, with the fire that occurred in 2018 at the Brazilian museum, this collection was lost.

“He [Natterer] made a monumental collection, which was sent to Vienna. It ended up forming the largest and oldest ethnographic collection of Brazil in the world – and one that Brazil is unaware of”, described Barbieri, in an interview with Brazil Agency. Among this material, said the filmmaker, are masks, utensils, weapons, blowguns and musical instruments used by indigenous people, such as a trumpet. “All of these pieces are practically intact 200 years later.”

For this film, Barbieri retraced Natterer’s journey and also visited Austrian museums alongside Hans Munduruku, who was deeply impacted by this ethnographic collection. “These pieces have a gigantic cultural value, truly a treasure,” said the filmmaker, who intends to encourage a major campaign to repatriate this collection to Brazil. “I really want to take advantage of the avant-premiere and the screenings at the É Tudo Verdade festival to run a campaign to raise awareness [sobre a repatriação]. We want to mobilize Brazilian sectors so that, through this film, they become aware of this collection and facilitate the repatriation of these pieces.”

The documentary Tesouro Natterer, defined by its director as a “historical road movie with social impact” and which took 21 years to produce, will be shown in São Paulo on the 6th and 7th of April and, in Rio de Janeiro, on the 8th. and 9. At the festival, the film competes in the Brazilian Competition – Feature and Medium Films category.

Tributes and training

In addition to the competitive exhibitions, the special cycles of É Tudo Verdade will honor two great filmmakers: the Brazilian filmmaker and photographer Thomaz Farkas (1924-2011), whose centenary of birth is celebrated this year, and the Irish director and essayist Mark Cousins, who visits Brazil for the first time. The Classics exhibition also highlights the centenary of the birth of documentary filmmaker Robert Drew (1924-2014) and the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, in Portugal.

The event program also includes a series of training activities such as the 21st International Documentary Conference, which takes place at the Cinemateca Brasileira, in São Paulo.

The É Tudo Verdade Festival is recognized by the United States Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and automatically qualifies its winning films for entry into the Oscar competition in the categories of best Brazilian and international documentary and best documentary short.

More information about the festival and the complete program can be found on the website.