Julia Seraphim

Krishnamurti: The Revolution of Silence is one of those films you don’t watch; you experience it. Directed by Françoise Ferraton, the documentary about the Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti invites the viewer to slow down, observe, and, above all, be silent. I left the theater in suspense. The film echoes more than it explains, and perhaps this is its greatest merit: it seeks not to convert, but to awaken.

The director uses archival footage, interviews, and readings from notebooks spanning from 1961 to 1984, the year of the thinker’s last diary. The structure is simple, almost transparent, because at the center of everything is Krishnamurti’s voice; a calm, lucid voice that seems to traverse time and whisper to the present. He speaks about the power of observation, about how consciousness contains within itself human suffering. Not just personal suffering, but that of all humanity.

The film begins with the fluidity of a river. And it is precisely in this rhythm that Ferraton guides the narrative, a flow of images, people, nature. Gradually, the water gives way to earth, and contemplation becomes a mirror. Krishnamurti said that “to be free is to observe without judgment,” and the documentary seems to film exactly that: the gaze that frees itself from haste, from opinion, from the need to be right.

But it is impossible to emerge unscathed. The truth, here, becomes suffocating. The images of exhausted immigrants, families crossing borders in search of shelter, people without land, without homes, without countries, all fleeing war and famine, embody the collective suffering that Krishnamurti speaks of. It is the visible portrait of a sickened human consciousness. The silence he proposes is not an escape, it is a confrontation. It is an invitation to see human chaos without reacting with more noise, without trying to heal the world before looking at what is within us. The documentary traces his journey, from his youth in theosophical school to life in England and then in California, where he lived his final years. But more than a biography, The Silent Revolution is a state of mind. The film doesn’t try to explain Krishnamurti; it tries to feel with him.

Among the reflections, one phrase remains: “Compassion is freedom. And compassion means the end of suffering.” It’s simple and devastating. To be free, after all, is to cease the search. It’s to accept that perhaps the true revolution is internal, invisible, and silent. Krishnamurti: The Silent Revolution is a rare reminder that thinking isn’t always understanding, sometimes it’s just breathing. And in that breath, something changes.

You can find Krishnamurti at Festival do Rio.
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If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You is one of those films everyone needs to see. I left the screening at the Rio Film Festival shocked, and it took me days to digest everything Mary Bronstein builds here. It’s a film that pierces you—not by shouting, but by exposing with precision and irony what it means to be a woman (and mother) in a state of collapse.

Mary Bronstein doesn’t just film a woman on the verge of collapse—she films the collapse itself. In If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You, Rose Byrne plays Linda, a mother, psychologist, and survivor of a daily life that seems to conspire against her. The ceiling literally collapses, and the metaphor couldn’t be more obvious—and more painfully real. After water floods the apartment, Linda is forced to move to a motel with her sick daughter. Her husband is always absent, her therapist seems more interested in provoking her than helping her, and the whole world seems to demand balance when all she needs is five minutes of silence. Life falls apart in slow motion—and somehow, she still has to cope.

The film, distributed by A24, is a dark comedy that feels like a domestic nightmare. Mary Bronstein films the chaos with surgical precision: the close-ups, the suffocating close-ups, the frames that cut through the air. The visual absence of her daughter—who appears only with a fragmented body, feet, hands, and ears—is a brilliant gesture. The child exists, but the focus is on the mother, and that changes everything. If we saw the girl completely, we might forget to look at Linda—and that is precisely what the film is about: the woman who disappears behind the role of mother.

Rose Byrne is monumental. Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Actress in Berlin, she balances exhaustion, despair, and irony with a delivery that seems to emerge from a trance. In her every expression, there’s guilt and resistance, shame and love. Byrne doesn’t play the “good mother”—she plays the real woman, who wants to love but also wants to escape. Who loves silence as much as she fears loneliness. Bronstein’s script, at once cruel and funny, has a humor born from the absurdity of routine. “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You” isn’t just a provocative title—it’s a muffled cry from all the women trying to sustain a home, a job, a child, and their own sanity.

The director plays with genres: there’s drama, there’s comedy, there’s a light psychological thriller tone. And amidst it all, a stark portrait of contemporary motherhood emerges—a motherhood riddled with guilt, shame, and exhaustion. The perfect mother is a fiction as dangerous as the ceiling that threatens to collapse. The film asks a silent question: are we all born to be mothers? And an even more uncomfortable statement: being a woman is, in itself, a form of resistance.
In the end, “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You” leaves a feeling that lingers in your body. It’s impossible to leave feeling the same. Because after watching Linda, you’ll never look at your mother—or yourself—the same way again.

You’ll find “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You” at the Rio Festival.
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In Elisa , Leonardo Di Costanzo delves into the darkest corners of the human mind, that place where guilt and denial merge with survival. Inspired by a true story, the film is a co-production between Italy and Switzerland and follows Elisa, a 35-year-old woman imprisoned for over a decade for a brutal crime: killing and burning her own sister’s body. She claims to remember nothing. And perhaps that’s the only truth possible.

The director constructs a psychological drama that moves slowly, sometimes too slowly, but with purpose. Nothing is gratuitous. Silence speaks as much as speech, and Elisa’s gaze carries more questions than answers. By agreeing to participate in the research of renowned criminologist Alaoui—a specialist in family crimes—she finds herself forced to revisit what she fears most: her own memory.
L

ittle by little, fragments of the past emerge. A childhood marked by rejection; a mother who claimed she hadn’t loved her, a seemingly structured but emotionally devastated environment. Elisa grew up without affection, repressing her feelings until her anger became confused with fear. And when her fear overflowed, the crime occurred. She simply can’t face the reflection of what she was capable of doing.

The film proposes an uncomfortable reflection: what is guilt, after all? A moral burden, an instinct for self-protection, or just the name we give to that which we don’t know how to process? Costanzo articulates all of this through the sessions with Alaoui, who sees the criminal not as a monster, but as a human being, imperfect, flawed, and yet capable of redemption.

There is a stark contrast between the two examples of forgiveness presented: the father who visits his daughter twice a week in the penitentiary, and the mother in another case, who lost her son to murder and remains a prisoner of her own grief. One forgives the unforgivable; the other cannot survive hatred. Between them, the viewer is placed before a mirror, and the film asks: would you forgive a criminal?

The cold, almost clinical cinematography reinforces this distance between what is remembered and what is repressed. Elisa – The Veil of Guilt is a film about memory and denial, but also about humanity, about what remains when the punishment has been served, but forgiveness has not yet arrived.
Costanzo understands that looking at the past is the true prison. And perhaps forgiveness—of others and of oneself—is the only possible way out.

You can find Elisa – The Veil of Guilt at the Rio Film Festival.
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Since Tá e Fala Comigo, Felipe Sholl has been honing his own perspective on desire and affection. In Streets of Glory, this growing focus is confirmed—the director seems more relaxed, more courageous, and finally comfortable filming what many still avoid: the body, the taboo, the void. It’s a film that breathes the chaos of Rio at night, amidst sweat, light, and the lack thereof.

Gabriel (Caio Macedo) arrives in the city after his grandmother’s death, trying to find life where before there was only routine. A history professor, he becomes an observer and participant in what he researches: the men who sell pleasure and survive on the desires of others. Until he meets Adriano (Alejandro Claveaux), a Uruguayan male prostitute who becomes his escape—and downfall. What begins as curiosity becomes dependence; love, here, is a risky experience.

Felipe Sholl films the city as an emotional extension of the characters. The streets of Glória, Lapa, and Cinelândia are not just settings, they are states of mind. There’s always something pulsing—a siren, party music, a passing body. The use of handheld camera and anamorphic lens zooms in, compresses, and creates a sense of urgency. The exception is the mirror scene—the turning point, when the lens closes and Gabriel’s world closes in.

The relationship between Gabriel and Adriano is intense and restless, made of presence and absence. Caio Macedo delivers a delicate performance, built on gaze, hesitation, and restrained surrender. Alejandro Claveaux balances vulnerability and mystery, avoiding the caricature of either the “savior” or the “lost.” The chemistry between the two is raw, unpredictable, almost dangerous.

With a score that ranges from Letrux to silence, the film moves between documentary and delirium. Sex work, grief, and addiction appear not as a shock, but as a consequence of a body that yearns to feel—and of an affection that sometimes hurts more than it heals.

Ruas da Glória is a portrait of love and its disasters. Of the loneliness that not even the other’s body can resolve. Of the city that continues to live while we fall apart inside. Felipe Sholl films with courage and intimacy, transforming Rio’s nocturnal chaos into a mirror of what we still try to understand within ourselves.

You can find Ruas da Glória at Festival do Rio.
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The first scene of Caramelo already gives it all away: a hungry stray dog, a chicken on display, and Waldick Soriano singing “I’m Not a Dog.” It’s almost a synthesis of the country; the hunger, the improvisation, and the nostalgic soundtrack accompanying the chaos. Directed and written by Diego Freitas, the new Netflix film attempts to Brazilianize the “dog movie” subgenre by focusing on a national symbol. And although the titular stray dog ​​is the main draw, the film ultimately divides the spotlight between the dog and its owner, a chef who also has a lot to learn about survival.

Pedro (Rafael Vitti), a chef on the verge of realizing his dream of opening his own restaurant, has his life turned upside down when he discovers he has cancer. The turning point comes in the form of four paws and a pleading look: Caramelo, a stray dog ​​who changes the course of the story, and Pedro’s own outlook on life. It’s the kind of synopsis that could easily slip into sentimentality, but Diego Freitas balances emotion and social critique with some astuteness.

The film isn’t about a “cute” dog; it’s about what he represents. Caramel is a portrait of the real Brazil: abandoned, resilient, and yet willing to offer affection. According to recent WHO data, the country has around 30 million abandoned animals—half of them dogs. An estimated 10 million live on the streets, and public and private shelters are constantly overcrowded, with capacity far below demand. In other words, the scene of the dog stealing chicken isn’t fiction: it’s a snapshot of everyday life on every street corner.

Rafael Vitti finds a role here that escapes the “soap opera heartthrob” aesthetic, and it works well. He delivers a restrained character, stricken by loneliness and fear of time. The counterpoint comes from Amendoim, the real-life dog who plays Caramelo, who steals the film with pure charisma. Freitas succeeds in using the dog as a metaphor for the country: cheerful, resilient, and eternally improvised.

Visually, the film has one foot in realism and the other in advertising, perhaps a reflection of Netflix itself trying to domesticate precariousness. The soundtrack helps, the scenes in São Paulo are textured, and the supporting cast (including Paola Carosella, in a small but sympathetic role) sustains the tone of humanity.

But Caramelo’s greatest merit lies off-screen: the 60 dogs used in filming were rescued and adopted by the crew itself. In a country where a canine’s gaze begs for care on every corner, this gesture transforms fiction into action.

In the end, Caramelo is about what remains when haste and indifference pass: the gaze of a dog that still believes in us. And perhaps, amidst so much cynicism, that’s what Brazil needs most—a little loyalty, even after so many hardships.

You can find Caramelo on Netflix.

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There’s something very special about seeing a Brazilian comedy take center stage at a festival. Perrengue Fashion, directed by Flávia Lacerda and starring Ingrid Guimarães, represents this milestone; not only by opening up space for humor, but by showing that comedy can also provoke reflection, revisit feelings, and challenge us.

Paula Pratta (Guimarães) is a fashion influencer who lives in a world of filters, campaigns, and hashtags. When her son (Filipe Bragança) abandons everything to dedicate himself to a permaculture project in the Amazon, she finds herself forced to travel through the forest, and with it, through herself. The journey, which begins as a desperate search for her son to participate in a fashion advertising campaign, becomes a journey through what truly matters.

Flávia Lacerda guides the narrative with lightness, without losing sight of the characters’ humanity. Ingrid Guimarães, already recognized for her comedic prowess, delivers a mature, funny, yet sensitive performance. There’s a glimmer of vulnerability in Paula: the woman who had to be everything herself, who overcame social barriers, and who now tries to control her son’s future as a way to ensure her own emotional security. It’s in this control that the character’s silent drama resides, and the comedy emerges precisely in the friction between the fantasy of a perfect world and the inevitable collapse of real life.

The script, written by Ingrid, Edu Araújo, Célio Porto, and Marcelo Saback, strikes a balance between humor and critique. The dialogue allows laughter to turn into affection. There are genuinely funny moments, largely due to the chemistry between Ingrid and Rafa Chalub, who forms an unlikely and irresistible duo. Chalub, coming from social media, surprises with his naturalness.

But Perrengue Fashion goes beyond culture clash comedy. It talks about single mothers who bear the burden of raising children alone, about the generation that needs to relearn how to listen to their children, and about the discomfort of leaving one’s comfort zone, be it an Instagram feed or a middle-class apartment.

At its core, it’s a film about starting over. About when the forest, both literal and symbolic, forces us to take off our heels, step onto the ground, and remember who we were before everything became a performance, before everything was for the other, when it was for us.

Ingrid Guimarães proves, once again, that she knows how to laugh at herself and transform that laughter into something greater: empathy. Perrengue Fashion makes you laugh, but it also makes you think.

You can find Perrengue Fashion in theaters starting October 9th.

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Yesterday I watched In-I in Motion at the Rio Film Festival. Directed by and starring Juliette Binoche, the film begins with a courageous gesture: making oneself vulnerable in the face of art and one’s own limitations.

In 2007, Binoche decided to step away from filmmaking to create a dance performance with choreographer Akram Khan. The agreement between the two was simple and symbolic—she would help him become a better actor, and he would teach her to dance. From this exchange was born the show In-I, and now the film, which blends backstage, rehearsals, and performance in a single movement.

It’s intriguing to watch an actress of Binoche’s stature shed the security of acting to explore a new body. The documentary captures the raw process: long rehearsals, stumbles, exhaustion, frustrations, and moments of discovery. There’s something deeply human in watching her learn to breathe differently, fall and get up, find rhythm with her whole body. The dance born from error is, perhaps, the truest.

At many moments, In-I in Motion becomes a mirror of the relationship between Binoche and Khan—two artists trying to access what’s most authentic in each other. Between friction and partnership, the film finds its pulse. It’s art refining art.

During the festival, Binoche commented that she wasn’t completely satisfied with the final result and that the complete show at the end was a decision made by the distributor. She’s working on a new cut, thirty minutes shorter. And it makes sense: there’s a breath of fresh air the film still seeks, a lightness that better fits its purpose.

But what touched me most was what she said after the screening: that we all have an artist within us, and that the challenge is to overcome the fear of accessing it. In In-I in Motion, she does exactly that—she faces fear with her body, without masks, without control, without hiding.

As a spectator, I admired her courage. As an artist, I felt the urge to move too—to make more mistakes, try more, exist more. In-I in Motion isn’t just a film about dance; it’s about freeing the body from the demands of perfection.
In the end, the essential remains: the moment when fear transforms into movement.

You’ll find In I In Motion at Festival do Rio.Did you like the content? Then leave a comment to let me know!
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Some films don’t end when the screen fades to black; they linger within us, like a fever. Alpha, Julia Ducournau’s new feature, is exactly that: a film that burns, itches, and doesn’t heal.

Written and directed by the filmmaker who redefined body horror with Raw and Titane, Alpha is, above all, a dive into the flesh; but a flesh that rots and crumbles to dust, that doesn’t scream, but silences. A family drama that begins intimate and ends apocalyptic, questioning what happens when love and infection become blurred.

I saw Alpha at the Rio Film Festival and I confess: my expectations were enormous. Julia Ducournau is my favorite director. A while ago, when someone asked me who I admired most in cinema, I didn’t know how to answer. I only knew after seeing Raw and Titane. There, I understood that her cinema touches me in a rare way: it’s physical, feminine, and wild. She films the body as if she were filming the soul.

And Alpha reaffirms this. In the opening scene, a girl draws on the wounds of the man who cares for her, connecting scars as if trying to reconstruct a lost constellation. It’s beautiful and disturbing, almost impossible to look away. Ducournau’s camera has this brutal delicacy: making us look even when we want to look away.

“This is not a good time to bleed.”

When the film cuts to Alpha’s uncle taking drugs, I saw an echo of Requiem for a Dream. The needle, the skin, the desperation. But what struck me most was the next scene: Alpha, now a teenager, drunk at a party, letting someone tattoo a crooked “A” on her arm. In that moment, I found myself remembering what I watched at thirteen, like Me, Christiane F., and Skins. That mix of discovery and self-destruction, the desire to belong and the fear of losing oneself. Julia Ducournau understands this threshold like few others, the moment when the body wants to be free and ends up becoming a prison.

The film is a grand pandemic odyssey. The infection here is both literal and symbolic: bodies that turn to marble before dissolving into white powder. Fear spreads, and society disintegrates—a reflection of everything we’ve experienced: the isolation, the paranoia, the lack of touch. There’s a moment when Alpha’s mother, played captivatingly by Golshifteh Farahani, cleans up her daughter’s vomit and discovers the fresh cut of her tattoo, and I felt the lump in my throat of someone who loves and fears at the same time.

Tahar Rahim is splendid as the uncle, a frail, sick, and guilt-ridden body. The relationship between the three: mother, daughter, and brother, is the beating heart of the film. It’s where Ducournau transforms horror into tenderness, illness into bond.

And as always, the soundtrack is a character in its own right. When Portishead started playing right at the beginning, I felt that chill that only her cinema evokes, as if each beat were a drop of blood falling in slow motion.

“It must be hell to be a kid these days.”

Yes, the final act drags on too long, with somewhat confusing time jumps. But even there, there’s an emotional coherence: the chaos is part of the experience. Alpha is a film about collapse—of the body, of the family, of the world.

I left the screening feeling covered in the same white powder that dominates the screen. As a spectator, I felt the physical discomfort; as a screenwriter, I admired the courage. And as a woman, I recognized myself in that final gesture, trying to reattach someone’s torn flesh.

In the end, Alpha isn’t about viruses. It’s about the contagion of loving someone to the point of pain. And perhaps that’s why I keep thinking about it—and about Julia Ducournau—long after the theater lights have gone out.

You can find Alpha at Festival do Rio.

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Yesterday I watched GOAT. I slept with it and woke up with it—and perhaps that says more about the film than any technical analysis. Because GOAT resonates. It disturbs. It lingers. And perhaps it lingers precisely because it touches on a point that cinema rarely dares to confront with such brutality: the physical and symbolic pain of sport.

Directed by Justin Tipping and sponsored by Jordan Peele, the film follows Cameron “Cam” Cade (Tyriq Withers), a young, rising quarterback who, after a near-fatal injury, receives a second chance from his greatest idol, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans). What begins as a dream turns into a ritualistic nightmare—a plunge into toxic masculinity, idolatry, and the boundaries between training, torture, and transcendence.

The title GOAT — Greatest of All Time — is more than an acronym for greatness; it’s a sentence. The quest for the “best of all” becomes literal and monstrous when the GOATs’ lineage is revealed as a succession of sacrificed bodies, transferred blood, inherited power. There’s something both religious and profane about this cycle: each generation of athletes devours the previous, an explicit metaphor for the society that consumes its heroes to the bone.

As a viewer and as a screenwriter, I found myself torn. There’s a powerful idea there—a body horror that speaks to the pressure of performance, to the body as a battlefield and the mind as a minefield. There are moments when the film finds this pulsating flesh, especially when Cam trains under the scorching desert sun, and sweat seems to blend with madness. But between the second and third acts, the narrative loses its way: the metaphors become too literal, the visuals repeat formulas, and the climax feels rushed—more concerned with shock than with depth.

As an athlete, I recognize what the film is trying to convey: the sacrifice, the pressure, the emptiness after glory. That place where only pain keeps you going. But as someone who lives for cinema, I missed rhythm, subtlety, and visual consistency. The photography and editing flirt with something interesting—the X-ray flashes, the shifting color temperatures—but end up becoming excessive and predictable.

Even so, GOAT touched me on a personal level: this intertwining of body and mind, faith and pain, the dream and nightmare of being “the best.” There’s a fine line between overcoming and self-destruction, and the film walks precisely that line—stumbling, at times, but leaving its mark.

In the end, the blood that flows from Cam’s body is the same blood that flows from anyone who has ever tried to be too perfect at something. GOAT isn’t a perfect film, but a cracked mirror—and sometimes it’s in those mirrors that we recognize ourselves most.

You can find The Goat in theaters.

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I watched Rabia at the opening screening of the 2nd edition of the Incredible Film Festival and left the theater in silence. With that heavy silence, full of thought. It’s a film that doesn’t shout. It murmurs. It presses. It leaves its mark.

Inspired by the true story of Moroccan Faitha Mejjati (the feared Oum Adam), Mareike Engelhardt’s feature film, in her directorial debut, delves into one of the least explored (and most frightening) aspects of the Daesh regime: the madafas, houses where young Western women, converted and indoctrinated, waited to become wives of the fighters.

We follow Jessica, a young French woman, who trades the promise of freedom for an invisible cell in Raqqa. Initially dazzled by the promise of belonging and faith, she soon finds herself in the hands of Madame (played by Lubna Azabal), a charismatic, fanatical, and cruel figure. A true ruler of silence, manipulation, and female erasure.

The film succeeds in avoiding sensationalism: it doesn’t show the violence directly, but it’s there: in the muffled noises, the locked doors, the averted glances. The staging uses the off-screen as an aesthetic and emotional weapon. Sound, silence, and the marks on the body and soul speak louder than any dialogue. Mereike Engelhardt understands the power of the unsaid, and it is in this unspokenness that the horror grows.

Agnès Godard’s cinematography is another highlight: claustrophobic when necessary, ethereal at times, it visually accompanies Jessica’s transformation (and deformation): from a young idealist to someone torn apart and shaped by pain. David Chalmin’s soundtrack, tenuous and unsettling, reinforces this dark spiral.

But perhaps Rabia’s greatest achievement is the script. It doesn’t explain, it doesn’t patronize, it doesn’t judge. It observes. It denounces. And it invites us to reflect. Women seeking a new life, an identity, end up finding the opposite: submission, surveillance, erasure.

And there’s a cruel twist: the cycle of violence perpetuates itself. Jessica becomes Oum Rabia (“rage”), and the victim begins to reproduce what she suffered. The turning point is dry, unassuming, and therefore so devastating.

Rabia is, yes, harsh. But necessary. An almost unprecedented portrait of these women-run prisons, where other women were trained, molded, and often destroyed. And it’s also a reminder: even today, many of these girls remain imprisoned in the Al-Hol refugee camp, living in the aftermath of extremism.

In the end, the film offers no easy answers, but a glimmer of hope. And the question that remains, echoing after the credits, is: how many other Jessicas are still out there, believing they are being saved, when in fact they are being silenced?

You can find Rabia in theaters starting August 21st.

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