Sanfic Industria Title ‘Monstro,’ From Diogo Leite, a Brazilian ‘Sunset Boulevard’ (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comHolly Jones The lives of a self-obsessed film star and a struggling filmmaker collide in Brazilian director-producer Diogo Leite’s first feature, “Monstro,” set to screen as a pic-in-post at the Ibero-American Work in Progress strand of this week’s Sanfic Industria.“Monstro” follows Magaiver, a young filmmaker who moonlights as an Internet technician in order to survive.
His life takes a bittersweet turn as he’s hired to film a retrospective on ageing cinema star Laura. The ignorance of the elite on full display, Magaiver’s life is upended to accommodate her fragile ego, leaving him to question the legitimacy of a trade he once coveted.Produced by Leite (“Menino Pássaro”) and his Filmes de Mentira, alongside Andrea Lanzoni, a creative producer at Brazilian production house, Fenda the film taps the idle lives of the bourgeois as they fall from grace, a biting exposé of the prejudice that lurks plainly behind an industry that celebrates each faux advance. “Diogo brings cinema with complex characters, he’s been building a black narrative free from stereotypes, a narrative that’s often ahead of the spaces to which the audiovisual industry itself confines black creators” said Lanzoni. “The movie ‘Monstro,’ can be seen as a film of racial discussion, but it talks mainly about empathy, the human condition in these times, the weaknesses and strengths of the characters and their values.”“Despite the advances of an affirmative policy, black cinema which doesn’t only focus on a racial discussion still faces great difficulties.
This is something that we have to discuss urgently,” she added.Leite spoke with Variety about the uphill battle towards inclusivity in film, authenticity in storytelling and the struggle to bring diverse.
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