The Brazilian Academy of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts has announced today that Mars One / Marte Um, directed by Gabriel Martins, has been selected as the South American country’s official contender for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards. The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January and has played at numerous film festivals including Tribeca, San Francisco, and Cleveland.
Mars One follows the Martins family, who are optimistic dreamers, quietly leading their lives in the margins of a major Brazilian city following the disappointing inauguration of a far-right extremist president. A lower-middle-class Black family, they feel the strain of their new reality as the political dust settles. Tércia, the mother, reinterprets her world after an unexpected encounter leaves her wondering if she’s cursed.
Her husband, Wellington, puts all of his hopes into the soccer career of their son, Deivinho, who reluctantly follows his father’s ambitions despite secretly aspiring to study astrophysics and colonize Mars. Meanwhile, their older daughter, Eunice, falls in love with a free-spirited young woman and ponders whether it’s time to leave home.
Brazil has submitted candidates for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film since 1960. The South American country has been nominated four times, the most recent was in 1998 for Walter Salles’ Central Station; and in 2007, Cao Hamburger’s The Year My Parents Went On Vacation made the shortlist.
