Sewer Company

A comedy set in a small town in southern Brazil. The town has no sewer. Waste runs in the open, the smell is unbearable, and petitions have been written for years. Then a notice appears. The state has a fund, but the money is given for one thing only: making a video. Marina finds the idea. If money cannot be had for a sewer, it can be had for a video about a sewer. They apply and are accepted. They have ten thousand in hand and no knowledge of film whatever. From there the film is a story about a shoot. A camera is hired, a script is written, actors are sought and neighbours are persuaded. They want to make a documentary but find it dull. In the end they decide on a monster film; the monster will come out of the drain. What the narrative is interested in is not cinema but bureaucracy: the film is about a town being able to meet its need only by writing it under the wrong heading, and the joke comes from there. As the shoot goes on the town changes. People begin talking to each other and the work becomes something independent of its purpose. The film-within-the-film sections are deliberately bad. The costume is a bin bag, the sound is poor and the acting is terrible; the narrative shows this with affection. There is the matter of money as well. The rules of the fund require every coin spent to be documented, and that is the town's real obstacle. Fernanda Torres, Wagner Moura, Camila Pitanga and Bruno Garcia are in the cast. Jorge Furtado wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes gentle provincial comedy and films about making films. Who it is not for: anyone expecting sharp satire; the narrative does not strike its target hard and the tone stays sweet throughout.