Up Against Them All

Vengeance, betrayal, sex and religion - Brazilian director Roberto Moreira's first feature film has all the ingredients of a classic drama yet its primary purpose is to visualize the contradictions of contemporary Brazil: the home of the wonderful samba and warm, generous people but at the same time a place where you can have someone killed for very little money. The film focuses on a man, Teodoro (Guilio Lopes), who tries to compensate for beating up his daughter Soninha (Silvia Lourenco) and working as a killer-for-hire, with extreme religious devotion.
Domestic violence is intertwined with the violence that permeates the Brazilian soci-
ety in this Dogma-esque depiction of a family tragedy. Although it shares producers with the sublime City of God, the aesthetic is quite different. Moreira has chosen to avoid cliche environments filled with children, noise and music; instead he follows and studies lower middle class grown-ups with his nosy DV camera. Parts of the dialogue is improvised which adds to the natural feeling of the film.
Up Against Them All is Roberto Moreira's first feature as a director. It won a Silver Firebird Award at the Hong Kong lnternational Film Festival.

NANUSHKA YEAMAN

Premiärstatus
Nordisk premiär: Orig. titel
Contra Todos: Medverkande
Leona Cavalli, Silvia Lourenco, Ailton Graca: Producent
Georgia Costa Arajuo: Manus
Roberto Moreira: Foto
Adrian Cooper: Musik
Livio Tragtenberg: Talat språk
Portuguese