Terra em Transe

A pivotal film from one of the key figures of Brazil’s Cinema Novo movement, Terra em Transe is an urgent and poetic account of political corruption, the systems that shape it, and the challenges of active citizenship in times of political upheaval. Made three years after the right-wing coup d’etat in Brazil, the film is set in the fictional country of El Dorado, in which a young intellectual attempts to chart a political path. First joining the extreme right, and then a party of the left, he ultimately finds dispiriting power dynamics in each. Told through a mesmeric style, and mixing surrealist and realist aesthetics, Terra em Transe is a resonant work of political cinema that pushes its audience to examine its own role in civil society.