The Patient

Brazil, 1985. Tancredo Neves, elected president indirectly after twenty years of military dictatorship, falls ill on the eve of his inauguration and is taken to hospital. The first diagnosis is acute appendicitis and the doctors operate, but the diagnosis is wrong. A series of further procedures makes his condition worse and he dies without ever taking office. Sérgio Rezende’s film is not a political biography but a medical thriller covering those last thirty odd days. Gustavo Lipsztein wrote the screenplay from a book by the historian Luís Mir. Othon Bastos plays Neves and Esther Góes plays his wife Risoleta, with Paulo Betti, Otávio Müller, Leonardo Medeiros and Emílio Dantas as the doctors.