The Boy and the World
O Menino e o Mundo
Alê Abreu
© Les films du Préau
A boy leaves his village in search of his father, and discovers a fantastic world dominated by machine animals and strange beings. A lyrical, dreamlike journey that brilliantly illustrates the problems of the modern world.
Scenario : Alê Abreu
Cinematography : Alê Abreu
Music : Ruben Feffer, Gustavo Kurlat
Cinematography : Alê Abreu
Music : Ruben Feffer, Gustavo Kurlat
Production : Filme de Papel
Distribution : Les Films du Préau
Distribution : Les Films du Préau
A simple character in a complex world. O Menino e o Mundo (The Boy and the World) follows the gaze of its young protagonist, moving from naive drawings on a white background to extremely elaborate sets evoking distinct realities. The favelas that are home to the men who work in the factories making clothes to be transported from the port in multitudes of containers. With a marabout/make-do effect, this almost wordless film (apart from a few snippets in an imaginary language: backwards Brazilian) jumps from one world to another taking the viewer through as many different styles of drawing as there are types of music present. The breathtaking beauty of the drawings of cotton fields or the night in the favela is transformed at times into a visual symphony, a tribute to Norman McLaren’s technique of painting on film, and at others into a deeply pessimistic ecological fable. (Raphaëlle Pireyre; Critikat)