Joao Emanuel Carneiro Movies

Legendary Brazilian director Carlos Diegues recasts the tragic myth of Orpheus in the shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro during Carnival. Orfeu de Conceicao is the most famous samba player in Brazil, and one of the most respected members of the neighborhood of Carioca Hill, a labyrinth of dirty streets and quickly made shacks ruthlessly controlled by drug lord Lucinho. Young Orfeu, though, lives a gilded life. He has his pick of a bevy of local beauties, children worship him, and the corrupt police will not harass him like the others in the area. During the run-up to Carnival, his world is turned upside down with the appearance of the gorgeous Euridice, who has just moved from the remote untamed hinterland of the Amazon. In spite of her indifference to samba music and her initial reluctance, the two soon fall passionately in love. Unfortunately, the violence of their surroundings threatens to overwhelm them. When Lucinho takes a liking to Euridice and challenges his former childhood friend, Orfeu is forced to endure a brutal test for his love. Orfeu was screened at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Former documentary filmmaker Walter Salles (Foreign Land) directed this Brazilian-French road movie tracing the travels and travails of a young boy and an aging woman across the Brazilian landscape. In Rio de Janeiro's central railroad station, callous Dora (leading Brazilian stage/screen actress Fernanda Montenegro) works at a stand where she writes letters for a parade of poor and illiterate. Some of these remain undelivered because she chooses not to mail all of the letters. One of her customers is a woman whose nine-year-old son, Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira), hopes to see the father he has never met, but after the mother dictates two letters to the father, she's killed when hit by a bus. Since Josue is left homeless, Dora reluctantly takes him home to her small apartment overlooking the railroad tracks, where she sometimes spends time with her neighbor Irene (Marilia Pera). Dora places Josue with people who claim to find adoptive parents. When Irene informs her they actually sell children who are then killed for their organs, Dora rescues Josue, and the two board a bus. After a failed attempt to abandon Josue at a roadside stop, Dora and Josue hitch a ride from a religious truck driver. Failing to locate his father, they arrive penniless at a huge rural religious convocation, where Josue suggests Dora bring her letter-writing skills back into play. The notion works, and Dora profits by writing letters to saints for the more devout among the assembled multitudes. Continuing on, they arrive at a sprawling-mass housing development -- and hopefully, a solution to the problem of a family for Josue. Young actor de Oliveira was a shoeshine boy who beat out more than 1,500 other children who auditioned or were interviewed for the Josue role. Made with grants from the Sundance Institute, NHK, and the French Ministry of Culture, this film was shown at 1998 film festivals (Sundance, Berlin). ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide