Private Desert

Daniel is forty and a policeman. He used excessive force in an incident and has been suspended; the investigation is going on and his name is in the paper. At home he looks after his father, whose memory is going. There is someone he met by telephone. Sara has been writing for months and they talk. Then Sara stops answering. Daniel gets in his car and drives to the other end of the country, to the north. He reaches a small town and starts looking for her. Nobody knows anyone called Sara. Aly Muritiba directs; he wrote the screenplay with Henrique Dos Santos. Antonio Saboia plays Daniel and Pedro Fasanaro plays Sara; Thomás Aquino and Laila Garin are in the cast. It is a Brazilian and Portuguese co-production. The film won the audience award in the Venice Days section at the 2021 Venice Film Festival. It was submitted as Brazil's entry for the Oscar. The narrative splits in two; the first half in the south, the second in the north, and the register changes entirely. The matter it treats is identity and religion; the town is conservative and everyone knows everyone. The narrative does not make Daniel sympathetic; he is angry, closed and inclined to violence. The film takes regional difference in Brazil as a subject too; the two halves are like separate countries. The narrative gives no easy resolution and the situation stays uncertain. Its limit is pace; the narrative is slow, the first half long, and the ending open. Who it is for: viewers who like Brazilian cinema and narratives of identity. Who it is not for: it is slow, sombre, and the ending unresolved.