Medusa
With her 2015 debut Kill Me Please, Brazil’s Anita Rocha da Silveira presented a vibrant giallo inspired film, arriving amongst a first wave of women director’s from her country gearing up to make a mark through Vania Catani of Bananeira Filmes (who produced Lucrecia Martel’s last feature in Zama in 2018 as well as Lisandro Alonso’s upcoming epic Eureka). Her latest finds her returning to work with DP Joao Atala (who also recently lensed the 2019 doc The Edge of Democracy). Rocha de Silveira’s 2015 debut Kill Me Please premiered at the 2015 Venice Film Festival in the Horizons sidebar. Medusa stars Mariana Oliveira and Lara Tremouroux.
Gist: Rocha da Silveira returns to subversive genre dynamics with Medusa. In a medium sized Brazilian city ruled by an evangelist church, young men and women are grouped off into homogenous units to mete out the church’s violent punishment for those who do not conform to their rigid social norms. The women’s group, known as the Treasure of the Altar, are responsible for reigning in immodest, promiscuous women. Twenty-year-old Bia, an Afro-Brazilian nursing student, is scarred during a comprised attack on one such woman, and the injury causes her to lose her position at a beauty clinic. Taking work at a nursing home for comatose patients, Bia is confronted by Melissa, the irreparably scarred first victim by the Treasures. One look in Melissa’s eyes transforms Bia forever…
Release Date/Prediction: Currently in post-production, the Berlinale Talents Project / TorinoFilmLab / Biennale Cinema 2020 workshopped Medusa seems primed for a major festival berth in 2021. A slot in Berlin IFF’s 2021 competition seems feasible, and if bypassing this fest, we’d expect Rocha de Silveira to pop up at Cannes in Un Certain Regard or the genre friendly Directors’ Fortnight (where she premiered her short, Os Mortos-Vivos).
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