My Uncle Killed a Guy

Seventeen year old Duca's uncle is accused of killing a man. The uncle denies the murder and does not deny being there. With his friend Isa and his neighbour Cris, Duca tries to work out what happened. The story runs over a week, and the same event is retold repeatedly by different people. Jorge Furtado writes and directs. The interesting thing is the form. The narrative keeps stopping: Duca talks to the camera, text appears on screen, drawings and photographs cut in. Furtado came from short film and television, and the fast, interrupted language comes from there. The second subject is the unreliability of memory. The same night is told four times and a different detail changes each time; a film that starts like a detective story becomes an argument about how testimony is constructed. The register stays light. The killing is serious and the film proceeds as adolescent comedy, with everyday scenes in Porto Alegre taking up most of it. Furtado was already known internationally for his short Ilha das Flores, and the same ironic manner is here. Who it is for: viewers who like Brazilian independent cinema and youth films with formal play in them. Who it is not for: the killing is not taken seriously and the resolution is too easy, and the narrative technique starts repeating after a while.