Berlin Title ‘Dry Ground Burning’: A Film That Captures the State of Present-Day Brazil

variety.com:

Emiliano Granada World premiering in the Berlinale’s Forum, “Dry Ground Burning” marks the second feature collaboration between directors Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós, after Pimenta DP-ed Queirós’ “Once There Was Brasilia.”So it’s no surprise that by this point the directorial couple have refined a common language that in “Dry Ground Burning” delivers a movie that’s stylistically refrained, while walking a fine line between documentary and a fiction with sci-fi and Western overtones.Produced by Cinco Da Norte and Terratreme with Pimenta once again behind the camera, the duo returns to their portrayal of the inhabitants of Ceilandia, a district on the periphery of Brasilia which has been a recurring subject in both filmmakers work.

The film follows sisters Chitarra and Léa, leaders of an all female gang who refines oil drawn from an oil pipeline to sell to motor bikers in the Sol Nascente favela.

Yet the gang story is already past, remembered by its members in a prison. Neither film nor characters are interested in keeping strict chronology.Even if it often feels like crumbling sci-fi –a genre that Queirós has often played with, lending new meaning – with its arid environment and hand-made machinery, the film is still set in a very much contemporary Brazil.Variety interviewed Pimenta and Quierós – featured in a just pre-pandemic season of Brazilian filmmakers at New York’s Lincoln Center – as their new feature premiered at Berlinale.You use small spaces to create a larger world that almost feels like it belongs to a sci-fi movie.

How did you take on depicting an oil refinery? What were your bases? Queirós: The refinery was a very small space, a space within the city, it is the way of filming that transforms a space.