Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures

The year 1942, the north east of Brazil. Johan is German; he travels the villages with a lorry selling aspirin. His method is this: he sets up a screen on the back of the lorry, shows a film in the village square, and the film is in fact an advertisement. The villagers see cinema for the first time and buy aspirin. Ranulpho joins him on the road; he is fleeing the drought and wants to go south. The two travel on together. Johan fled the war in Europe. Brazil enters the war and the situation for Germans changes. Marcelo Gomes directs. Peter Ketnath and João Miguel are in the cast. It is a Brazilian production. It was shown in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival. The story comes from the director's family; his great uncle travelled in those years with a German selling aspirin in the north east. The matter it treats is two men wanting to go in opposite directions; one has to stay, the other to leave. The advertising screenings rest on real practice of the period; pharmaceutical companies used cinema this way. The north eastern landscape and the drought work inside the narrative; the place stands like a character. Its limit is plot; the narrative is thin and carries nothing beyond the two characters. Who it is for: viewers who like Brazilian cinema and road films. Who it is not for: it is slow, has little event, and gives little historical context.