Mars One

Four members of a poor family in Belo Horizonte. The father is a plumber hoping for work at a large development, the mother cleans houses, the daughter plays football and wants to leave the city with her girlfriend, and the youngest boy is planning to go to Mars. The family carries all of it at once. Gabriel Martins wrote and directed. The film takes place just after the 2018 election, in the period when the far right came to power; politics stays in the background and sets the air. The story generates no crisis. The expected dramatic events do not arrive and the film watches the family's daily solidarity instead, which is a deliberate choice. A Black Brazilian family in a state rarely shown on screen is at the centre here: there is poverty but no violence or crime. It played at Sundance in 2022 and was submitted as Brazil's Oscar entry. The boy's Mars plan is the title and the metaphor: everyone who wants to leave wants to go somewhere different. Who it is for: viewers who like quiet family films and contemporary Brazilian cinema. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events; the film runs deliberately level.