Quebrante

A spell breaking, Quebrante traverses the caves, ruins, and phantasmagorias of the Trans-Amazonian BR230 Highway, portraying its stones and its ghosts. Set in the tiny town of Rurópolis (Pará) – the very first one ever built on the Highway, to serve as a base for the workers constructing the road – Quebrante follows Ms. Erismar, known in the region as The Cave Woman. The retired elementary school teacher was the one who discovered the region’s caves. She would enter the dark unknown holes and explore their expanses with only a candle in her hands and a lighter tied to her pants. A huge nationalist propaganda effort, part of the progress and development project of Brazil, the Trans-Amazonian Highway was implemented during the civic-military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985, and it is today still a warm scar of the wrecked dream of the country’s history. Quebrante is a conversation between the moon and the stones, and freely inspired by Robert Smithson’s project The Truly Underground Cinema (1971) and Maya Deren’s film The Very Eye of Night (1958). (Berlinale)