River of Desire

Sergio Machado's 2023 Brazilian film is set in the Amazon, in a small settlement on the riverbank. Three brothers share a house; the new wife the middle brother brings home unsettles all three. Sophie Charlotte plays the woman, Daniel de Oliveira and Gabriel Leone two of the brothers. The film tries not to use the region as exotic decor. The river is both livelihood and boundary: it decides who can go where and who has to stay. Heat, damp and stillness form the ground that explains why desire turns so quickly into conflict here. The telling slips at points into the language of legend, with local beliefs about beings living under the water entering the story and blurring the line between the real and the imagined. Those shifts are the film's most distinctive and also its most debatable feature. Who it's for: anyone curious about Brazilian cinema set in the Amazon that mixes myth with realism. Who it's not for: viewers expecting the woman's own point of view to be given room; the story is built largely out of the men's desire.