LOADING
Directed by João Pedro Faro | 87 minutes | 15+ | Australian Premiere |
7:10pm Saturday, 16 May | Balam Balam Place - Cinema 4 | Buy Tickets | Buy Passes
A darkly funny and supremely creepy conspiracy takes a slacker through the nocturnal Rio streets!
Co-Presented by Yo Soy Collective
Rio de Janeiro, the night time: Miguel runs into his ex-girlfriend outside his apartment, and she speaks in riddles before her new boyfriend takes her away. Still processing, Miguel meets a masked enigma in the hallway, who may put something inside his head. Driven by forces beyond his understanding, Miguel follows an occult pattern through the city streets that will take him to a dark underworld haunted by past and future violence, as well as harsh noise music.
It’s a dark night of hypnagogic wandering as the certainty of conspiracy slowly but surely dawns. From strange angles, the architecture grows menacing and the mountains enormous, so it’s only terrifying inevitability when hooded figures appear from the shadows, some with knives and one with a saxophone. Miguel is just a slacker trying to get by, but he’s drawn ever-closer to something great and terrible in this slow-burn supernatural haze. A movie that will put a bad spell on you, like a country puts a curse on its citizens.
Screens with FEUERWERK (2025, dir. Timothy George Kelly, 20:00)
A dizzying, explosive tradition unfolds across decades of New Year’s in Berlin. From booze-soaked streets to the outer reaches of cosmos, this short documentary ricochets through time with the unpredictability of a misfiring firework. A baby is born, eight years later he holds a firework for too long. People dance, kiss and vomit on the streets. Dogs tremble in bathroom corners. A planet fades into oblivion. But how much longer can this once-chaotic city of fun and freedom keep the fire going?
SIMILAR: Cure, Under the Silver Lake, Friends and Strangers, Vulcanizadora, Tsai Ming-liang
“Director João Pedro Faro is unrivaled in depicting the deadpan horror of modern urban alienation, with images that make the ugly beautiful and vice versa.” - Kai Perrignon, BUFF Head Programmer
“How to love in the continuity of a violence – or rather: in the continuity of what still makes possible the many violences that organize the postcolonial urban space? Hard, of course.” - Victor Galdino, Camarescura
Country: Brazil
Year: 2026
Language: Portuguese