Madalena (2021) dir. Madiano Marcheti

A broken body in a white dress, lying lifeless in a swaying soya field. The image of this motionless body lends an extra charge to everything that follows. Marcheti follows three protagonists in turn. They don t know one another, but are all in some way connected through Madalena. Luziane, a club hostess, knocks on her door for money. Wealthy Cristiano inspects the vast expanse of soya fields for his demanding father. Trans woman Bianca and her girlfriends divide Madalena s things between them while reminiscing. Marcheti shot the film in the agrarian region where he grew up, capturing with great visual flair this largely unfilmed rural part of Brazil. A place where big agricultural machinery crawls monsterlike across the landscape and the farthest corners are known only to drones. A world that can also take on a spooky aspect now and then, Marcheti inventively gives an eerie twist to even the most everyday scene.