Executive Order

In the near future the Brazilian government issues a decree: black citizens are to be sent to Africa to return to their origins. It is called the Ministry of Return. Antônio, a lawyer, tries the legal route against it; his cousin André takes it public with a video, and the two become the face of a resistance neither intended. Antônio's wife Capitu has to go into hiding. It is Lázaro Ramos's first film as director. Alfred Enoch plays Antônio, Taís Araújo plays Capitu and Seu Jorge plays André. The source is Aldri Anunciação's stage play Namibia, Não. What it builds is a dystopia but the ground under it is real. Race was long treated in Brazil as though it were not there; the film inverts that denial and constructs a scenario in which the state uses race openly as a category. It was finished in 2020 but the pandemic delayed release until 14 April 2022. It drew 408 thousand admissions in Brazil and became the highest grossing domestic drama of that year. Alfred Enoch is the son of a Brazilian father and speaks Portuguese; British audiences know him from the Harry Potter films. The weakness is not that the tone shifts but that it never decides between satire and drama; some passages run in a comic register and reduce the weight of the scene that follows. Who it is for: viewers who want political dystopia built on race and the state, and contemporary Brazilian cinema. Who it is not for: the script explains its own idea more than once and the last section leans too hard on symbolism.