The debut of the classic Brazilian film director, woven from deep mysticism and fundamental social contradictions. Russian premiere of a restored copy in the programme The Rebellion of Dreams. Directed by Glauber Rocha.
The Turning Wind
- Date:
- 1 Feb 2026,
19:00–20:40
- Age restrictions
- 18+
Barravento
1962, Glauber Rocha
Brazil
81 minutes, Portuguese with Russian subtitles
Starring: Antonio Pitanga, Luíza Maranhão, Aldo Teixeira, Lucy Carvalho
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The inhabitants of a coastal village in Brazil’s state of Bahia survive on king mackerel, catching them in sturdy nets that leaves the fish no chance of escape. Descendants of enslaved Africans brought across the Atlantic, they have inherited the Candomblé religion, woven from animism and worship of the elements.
Shot from The Turning Wind, 1962
Rocha’s aesthetic is informed by both political analyses and ecstatic rituals; he creates a homegrown art of revolutionary mysticism.
—Richard Brody, The New Yorker
One day, the village’s settled rhythm is disrupted by Firmino, newly returned from the city. His arrival reveals a whole cluster of internal conflicts and irresolvable problems. Religion, freedom, destiny, love, conflict—each of these themes is placed under a question mark by the director. In unfolding these conflicts, Rocha is less interested in resolving them than in probing their meaning and inner complexity. Offering no simple or definitive answers, he reveals a world frozen in a cycle of exploitation and attempted liberation, death and resurrection.
The film became a point of departure not only for Glauber Rocha’s career, but for an entire movement that would come to be known as Cinema Novo. That same year, the director published his essay Critical Review of Brazilian Cinema, a true manifesto of a generation, and it was with The Turning Wind that he first began to refine the themes and principles articulated there.
