Daily Recommendation: AUGUST WINDS

“Gabriel Mascaro’s first narrative work is a sultry, richly sensorial meditation on sex, death, and decay in the tropics. In a remote seaside village, a steamy love affair between a city girl (Dandara de Morais) and a country boy (Geová Manoel dos Santos) unfolds on a lush coconut farm—until their languor is interrupted by a chilling discovery. Though working from a script, Mascaro’s documentary impulse prevails in his attention to the tempestuous meteorology (the director himself plays a scientist researching the winds) and weather-beaten landscapes of coastal Brazil in the climate-change era. Through stunningly composed images, he creates a haunting portrait of a place where life can be washed away at any moment.” —Film at Lincoln Center

AUGUST WINDS / VENTOS DE AGOSTO
A film by Gabriel Mascaro
(Brazil, 2014, 77 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)

Now streaming on Vudu, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play

Watch the trailer:

2014 | Brazil | Fiction | Color | 5.1 | 77 minutes Shirley has left the big city to live in a small seaside town and look after her elderly grandmother. She drives a tractor on a local coconut plantation, loves rock music and wants to be a tattoo artist. She feels trapped in the tiny coastal village. She is involved with Jeison, who also works on the coconut farm and who free dives for lobster and octopus in his spare time. During the month of August, when tropical storms pound the coastline, a researcher registering the sound of the trade winds emanating from the Intertropical Convergence Zone arrives in their village. The high tides and the growing winds mark the following days of the village and a surprise discovery takes Shirley and Jeison on a journey that confronts them with the duel between life and death, loss and memory, the wind and the sea.