Malu

Pedro Freire's first feature is set in a run-down house on a hillside in Rio de Janeiro. Malu is an unemployed actress who once worked in theatre and political performance and now lives on the memory of it. She shares the house with her conservative mother Lili, while her adult daughter Joana visits occasionally and every visit ends in a fight. The film shuts three women from three generations into one cramped space and shows love and rage becoming inseparable between them. Freire wrote the script from the life of his own mother, the actress Malu Rocha, and the set is based on the house where he lived with her as a teenager. Brazil's political past is felt continuously in the background. It screened at Sundance. Who it's for: viewers who like Latin American drama built on family conflict. Who it's not for: anyone wanting reconciliation and a comforting ending; the film does not resolve the fight.