The Hidden Tiger

Affonso Uchoa’s first feature is about several young people living in the neighborhood of Contagem, near Belo Horizonte. It is the polar opposite of several reactionary Brazilian films which tend to portray life in the periphery as part of a context saturated with inescapable, ineludible abjection, proving that with sociologic lucidity and a little cinematic sensitivity, you can shoot everyday life and show just the opposite. This doesn’t mean that some of the risks associated with drug dealing and thievery are absent from the reality shared by Juninho, Menor, Neguinho, Adilson, and Eldo; yet desire, friendship, labor, music, and a few moments of leisure function as obvious counter- weights here to the sort of characterization that much of Brazilian cinema holds in great esteem. Neither a documentary nor a fiction, A Vizinhança do Tigre is a portrait-like tale in which each scene reveals a way of being in the world and where writing constitutes a central practice for the characters’ symbolic universe – a central feature in Uchoa’s films. (Viennale)