Gabriel and the Mountain

Gabriel Buchmann is a Brazilian student who decides to travel for a year before starting a master's degree in the United States. In Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi he insists on living with local people in the cheapest conditions; he does not want to look like a tourist. In Malawi he climbs Mount Mulanje alone. The film begins with his death and works backwards through his last ten weeks. Fellipe Barbosa writes and directs. João Pedro Zappa plays Gabriel. The story is real. Gabriel Buchmann was the director's childhood friend and died in Malawi in 2009. Barbosa shot the film along the route he had taken; most of the local people in it actually knew Gabriel and play themselves. The most honest thing about it is that it criticises its subject. Gabriel means well and is insistent, does not listen, and keeps telling local people what they should do; the film does not present him as a hero and ties the cause of his death to that conduct. The image has a documentary texture; the camera is handheld and the locations are real. It screened in Critics' Week at the 2017 Cannes film festival and won an award there. Who it is for: viewers who like road films and independent work drawn from real events. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, the narrative is episodic, and knowing the ending from the start lowers the tension for some.