Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2022: #89. Carolina Markowicz’s Pedagio

Pedagio (Toll)

A feature film debut project that has been workshopped and invited to several high-end labs from Berlinale Talents, CineMart, TIFF to Torino Film Lab, Carolina Markowicz‘s Toll began filming late November last year and would likely be readied for the fall film festival circuit. The Brazilian filmmaker first came onto the scene with a string of fest friendly shorts beginning with 2017’s Long Distance Relationship, followed by The Orphan — a Directors’ Fortnight selection (Queer Palm winner) that was later showcased at TIFF and SXSW. Her co-directed Spit (2019) was also selected for the Directors’ Fortnight. Coined as a “discomforting social drama” and especially urgent seeing how Brazil’s current president is anti-LGBTQ+, this feature project will be embed some dark humor to tackle some of the thorny relationships that are not that uncommon in the filmmaker’s native country.

Gist: Suellen is a toll booth attendant who starts using her job to help a gang of thieves steal watches from people driving to the coast. But only for a noble cause: to send her son to an expensive gay conversion workshop.

Release Date/Prediction: With filming having begun around November, where looking at a Venice Film Festival premiere – likely in the Giornate degli Autori sidebar with a Toronto showcase well.