PASSAGENS

This short film follows Pelé, a retired nurse who looks back on his time as a Mateus in the century-old Bumba Meu Boi group, Boi Tira-Teima. As he builds a new boi for the festival, he revisits the defining moments of his journey as a performer, carnival artist, and son of Mestre Gerson, the group’s former patriarch. The film explores how the way we carry our memories of the past shapes who we become in the present.

In order to study fashion in so-desired Paris, a young country girl who hates Carnival travels to Rio de Janeiro to try to get support from the most famous designer in Brazil. Set on sneaking into the sewing team of one of the biggest samba schools, she will discover that Carnival only lasts for a week, but a love story can change her entire life.

Young lovers Orfeu and Eurydice run through the favelas of Rio during Carnaval, on the lam from a hitman dressed like Death and Orfeu's vengeful fiancée Mira and passing between moments of fantasy and stark reality. This impressionistic retelling of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice introduced bossa nova to the world with its soundtrack by young Brazilian composers Luiz Bonfá and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

No measure of hellfire preaching can quell the boisterous and bawdy passions of Maracatu, an Afro-Brazilian burlesque carnival tradition with roots in slavery that takes place in the northeast state of Pernambuco. As the Falstaffian character Tiao, Valmir do Coco leads a nonprofessional cast of authentic Maracatu practitioners in a tale told through dance, music, and the supernatural, set in the sugarcane fields outside Recife.

At the end of the 1940s, Lebanon is sliding towards a devastating conflict. Catholic siblings Emilie and Emir decide to leave for Brazil. Aboard the ship to their new home, Emilie falls in love with Omar, a Muslim merchant. For an enraged and jealous Emir, the relationship is intolerable. As the story unfolds against the backdrop of the majestic rainforest, Emir’s actions and the choice that Emilie subsequently makes lead to disastrous consequences.

During Carnival in São Paulo, a young man and young woman who knew each other as children meet again after many years and the social barriers that have kept them apart. Bad decisions lead the boy to hide with the girl inside a whale float.

Three couples meet in the middle of Carnival, trying to get together in the midst of various conflicts that have the biggest party in Brazil as a scenario - and often as a cause.

In the traditional carnival of the small town called Las Tablas, there are two rival streets: Up Street and Down Street. A young couple, after an unexpected encounter at the airport, fall hopelessly in love.