Bacurau

The small village of Bacurau in Pernambuco vanishes from online maps and satellite images after the death of its matriarch, Carmelita. First the phones go, then a strange drone appears overhead, then foreign hunters start shooting villagers for sport. Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles directed together. The genre is hard to name; weird western is the usual label, and the look comes from there too, shot with anamorphic Panavision lenses brought in from the United States and France, referencing sixties Italian and seventies American westerns. Sônia Braga and Udo Kier are in the cast, Kier as the leader of the hunters. The corrupt mayor controlling the water supply is the film's political axis. Arriving in Bolsonaro's Brazil, it was read directly as an anti-colonial polemic. It was shot in Rio Grande do Norte and won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2019. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 93 percent. Who it is for: viewers who enjoy genre collision and political allegory. Who it is not for: anyone put off by sudden graphic violence. The first half hour is calm and then it turns hard with no warning.