Trailer for Avanti Popolo.
In this layered and formally subversive first feature, iconic (and recently deceased) Brazilian filmmaker Carlos Reichenbach plays a withdrawn and foul tempered father who for 30 years has been waiting for the return of his son, who disappeared during the 70s dictatorship. When his other son, Andre (played by film academic Andre Gatti), moves in after his divorce, he tries to reconnect with his father and awaken him to life and his past via recovered Super-8 films and old LPs. Wahrmann crafts an intricate and evocative universe of images and especially of sound in an attempt to shake up the father's monotonous present and make the disappeared brother—as well as the past—less of a ghost. Andre wants the past to become part of his father's present, perhaps for him to even connect with the pain in order to wake up. Wahrmann attempts something similar with the spectator, taking us on a voyage as radical in form as the movements it evokes.