Following its world premiere in Competition at the 77th Cannes Film Festival last year, the tropical noir Motel Destino, the latest feature by acclaimed Brazilian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz, will open theatrically in the United States this summer. The film begins its U.S. run on Friday, August 29, 2025 at the IFC Center in New York City, before expanding to Los Angeles at the Laemmle Glendale.
Described by critic Justin Chang of The New Yorker as “a feverishly shambling erotic thriller” and hailed by David Canfield of Vanity Fair as “the sexiest movie at Cannes,” Motel Destino marks Aïnouz’s return to his native Ceará after more than a decade of international projects.
Known for films such as Madame Satã, Invisible Life (winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes), and the historical drama Firebrand, Aïnouz has built a reputation for bold, sensorial filmmaking that blends emotional intimacy with striking visual style. With Motel Destino, he re-engages with the landscapes, light, and rhythms of northeastern Brazil that shaped his early work.
Starring Fábio Assunção, Nataly Rocha, and Iago Xavier, the film immerses viewers in the neon-hued world of a roadside sex motel, steaming under the relentless blue skies of Brazil’s northeastern coast. The motel is run by hot-headed Elias and his restless younger wife Dayana. When 21-year-old Heraldo, on the run after a botched hit, arrives unexpectedly, the fragile equilibrium of the place begins to fracture. As this tropical noir unfolds, tangled loyalties and mounting desires drive the characters toward an inexorable fate, revealing that destiny has its own enigmatic design.
Shot by celebrated French cinematographer Hélène Louvart (La Chimera), this Brazilian co-production with France and Germany is rich in atmosphere—bathed in saturated color, layered with texture, and charged with the tension between intimacy and danger. Motel Destino unfolds as both an intimate and universal portrait of youth stifled by a dominant elite, where violence becomes the only means to assert life and desire.
