Maya Da-Rin’s Feveris spreading…

Paris-based Still Moving has released the first international teaser-trailer for the Brazilian filmmaker’s drama A Febre, which world premieres this week in main International Competition at the 2019 Locarno International Film Festival.

One of two Latin American Locarno Golden Leopard contenders, with Maura Delpero’s Argentine-Italian Maternal, A Febremarks one of the latest productions from Germany’s Komplizen Films, the recipient of Locarno’s 2019 Best Independent Producer Award.

Produced by Dar-Rin’s label, Tamandua Vermelho, and Sao Paulo-based Enquadramiento Filmes, A Febreis co-produced by Komplizen and Still Moving, which has also stepped up to handle international sales.

Brazil’s Vitrine Filmes, the go-to-distributor for many top Brazilian films will release A Febrein Brazil.

At a time when Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonarohas drawn world attention to the fate of the Amazon, championing its predominantly illegal logging industry, A Febre nails the fate of many indigenous Brazilians.

In the teaser trailer, Justino, 45, of Desano origin, pops his grandson onto his knee at dinner and tells him a story about a hunter who has a lot of food, but decides he wants more, falls asleep in the forest and is taken off by big monkeys to their magic kingdom. Now, the hunter doesn’t know how to go home.”

He could of course be talking about himself. Having come 20 years ago to Manaus, the Amazon’s huge port, Justino works as a society guard at a container depot, speaks perfect Portuguese, but yearns to go home. Unable to, when his daughter announces she has just won a place at med school at Brasilia U, an event which threatens to leave him not only lost but alone, he begins to run a high fever.

Beautifully sound-engineered, the trailer ends and the film begins with Justino listening to the night sounds of the Amazon rainforest, a hunter at heart, in exile.

“Far from exotic folkloric cliches, Maya [Da-Rin] takes us to the edge of a mysterious world where dreams and reality, human and animal, city and forest intertwine,” said Still Moving co-founders Pierre Menahemand Juliette Lepoutre.

They added: “The sweetness in her gaze and her beautiful empathy for such characters reflect an amazing maturity for a debut feature. Very few Brazilian filmmakers have dared to explore universes so far away from their own world.”

A Febre originated in conversations between Da-Rin and indigenous families now living in cities, when Da-Rin was shooting two documentaries in the Amazon Basin.

“The stories they told me about their experiences revealed the complex and tense relationship between indigenous cultures and Western civilization, which has marked Brazilian history since colonial times,” she recalled.

“I began to jot down my first notes for a movie centered on the relationship between two generations, a father and daughter living in Manaus,” she added.

Shot by ace cinematographer Barbara Alvarez, A Febrehas been put through many of Europe’s most prestigious development initiatives. Da-Rin first developed A Febreat the Cannes Festival’s Cinefondation, before it was selected for the TorinoFilmLab’sScript & Pitchand the Fabrique des Cinemas du Mondein Cannes.

It has received funding from Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fundfor development, Brazil’s Ancine Audiovisual Sectorial Fund, the Aide aux cinemas du monde, run by France’s CNCfilm agency, the TorinoFilmLab, Berlin’s World Cinema Fundand Paris’ Ile de Franceregion. Few films can claim such approbation.