Marianna Brennand’s debut feature Manas (Sisters) is a quintessential example of cinema that is driven as much by how the story is told as the story itself. A horrific account of scarred childhoods on the Amazon rainforest island of Marajo, it is narrated with a visual elegance and emotional nuance that further clouds over its heart of darkness.
The Portuguese language film had its world premiere at the Giornate degli Autori (Venice Days) parallel section of the Venice International Film Festival, where it won Brennand the Director’s Award. Now Sean Penn, Walter Salles and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have joined hands to board it as Executive Producers to roll out the commercial release.
At the centre of the torment and treacherousness is the teenager Marcielle aka Tielle (Jamilli Correa). She lives by the riverside in a small, remote community with her family—mother, father, two brothers, a sister with another sibling on its way. Things might look idyllic on the surface but are far from it. Oblivious of the rot around her, Tielle looks up to her elder sister and hopes to follow her footsteps to escape the limiting, sequestered life with the help of one of the men on the river barges. Little does she know about the trade-off involved in this transaction and the price that needs to be paid for the liberation.
Brennand’s Brazil-Portugal co-production mines her decade-long research of the indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest. She then deftly knits together (along with Felipe Sholl, Marcelo Grabowsky, Antonia Pellegrino, Camila Agustini and Carolina Benevides, credited as her co-writers) several individual accounts and testimonies of sexual abuse and exploitation—entrenched, formalised and accepted—into one searing whole.
It's one of the most powerfully written of the recent international films with potent performances to boot. Correa is riveting as Tielle, innocent, naïve, mischievous, resilient and rebellious by turns. It’s not just her own personal deliverance that she is intent on when she finds herself becoming a target of poisonous patriarchy. She is also cognizant of her younger sister who might end up facing the same violence.
Fátima Macedo as Tielle’s mother Danielle has an evocative presence. One who has been silent in her endurance and quiet in her rage but understanding and empathising with the storm brewing within her daughter. Someone has to break the perverse cycle after all. Dira Paes is rightly compassionate as cop Aretha, one of Tielle’s allies and well-wishers. The men in this scheme of things are less of rounded human beings, more symbols of a shadowy malevolence, fittingly so.
It’s the contrasts that power the narrative. As opposed to the disturbing theme of the film is the pristine, picturesque setting captured in all its lush glory by cinematographer Pierre de Kerchove. In focusing on the beauty he is able to bring us face to face with ugliness that lurks behind it in a more piercing way.
In much the same way the editing by Isabela Monteiro de Castro captures the unhurried, gentle, elemental rhythms of life to dredge out the harshness and brutality faced by the women in all its sinister force.
The finale seems a little too rushed. Nonetheless, Tielle’s final retribution against patriarchy is much-needed and in solidarity with all the young women of her community. An act of violence that is in defence of a safer future for all.
Much as it is heart-breaking, the film is also affirming in showing that the young women have each other’s backs. A rare coming of age film that isn’t just about the transformation within but also about challenging the hideousness of some of the social mores and bringing about a radical change in the out of line world we live in.