A small, isolated village in Pernambuco disappears from the maps. It can no longer be located. Cellphones lose their signal. The matriarch dies. The family gathers for the funeral. Foreign invaders arrive. Perhaps even extraterrestrials. The villagers, fiercely protective of their traditions and their history, barricade themselves inside their homes and prepare to defend themselves. Blood will be spilled. A great deal of blood. Kleber Mendonça Filho returns to explore once again the profound relationship between space and identity. It is not merely a question of geography, cartography or location: just as in his previous film it was never simply a matter of houses, dwellings, a roof over one’s head. The question is: who are we? For it is the space one inhabits that defines who one is. It is no coincidence that Juliano Dornelles, the production designer on Aquarius, here co-directs. Just as the house in the earlier film assumes the value of an inscription, a repository, a marker of the protagonist’s identity, the disappearing village in Bacurau is not only the last frontier its inhabitants must defend, but also the final stronghold in which they can exist in the world and recognise themselves. To protect their memory and, through it, understand who they are … The village of Bacurau thus becomes both an allegory of these timeless ideas and a metaphor for the identity of contemporary Brazil: a contested territory under assault by ruthless invaders … Mendonça Filho and Dornelles have made a deeply political film, yet they do so with exuberance, untamed imagination and fearless irreverence, blending western, thriller and science fiction, at times pushing toward slasher, flirting with comedy, and naturally embracing the mythology of the cangaço. Above all, there is a use of music that once again fuses disparate sounds and traditions, propelling the narrative not only beyond space, but beyond time itself.

Chiara Borroni, “Cineforum”, n. 586, July 2019