7 Prisoners

Mateus, eighteen, comes from the countryside to São Paulo for work and starts at a scrapyard with three friends. Their passports are taken, their debts are calculated and they are not allowed to leave. Rather than trying to escape, Mateus chooses to rise alongside the boss. The film is not interested in slave labour as such. It is interested in the passage from victim to operator: it does not let Mateus stay good-hearted, it promotes him inside the system and forces the audience to understand that promotion. The boss himself once worked in the same yard. The form is realist: scrap, copper wire, night shifts and the outer districts of the city. The camera watches from a distance and does not inflate the drama. Alexandre Moratto directed, with Ramin Bahrani and Fernando Meirelles involved in the production. The film showed in the Horizons section at Venice in 2021 and was then released on Netflix. Christian Malheiros plays Mateus and Rodrigo Santoro the boss. Who it is for: viewers who like Brazilian cinema and films about modern slavery. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a clear moral resolution. The film saves nobody and leaves its ending in an uncomfortable place.