São Paulo – Brazilian short movie “A Fábrica” (The Factory), by director Aly Muritiba, should compete in the Gulf Film Festival, a cinema exhibit to take place from April 10th to 16th in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. The movie tells the story of a convict who tries to convince his mother to take him a mobile phone to the penitentiary. Since it was completed, in August last year, the short movie has already won 42 awards.
“The movie, which has a very simple narrative, was written by myself in an attempt to humanise the figures that live in Brazilian penitentiaries, be they the convicts, the jailors or the relatives of prisoners,” said Muritiba, who started off from his five years’ experience as a jailor.
According to him, different from other movies on the matter, “A Fábrica” focuses not on the inmates and their crime, but on the relatives and their feelings. “Furthermore, the movie deals much with the expectations of spectators used to violent stories that take place in Brazilian suburbs. What I do is break with this expectation,” said the director.
The explanation for so many awards, several international, is the simplicity, according to Muritiba. “I think it is partly due to the simplicity and daring in the way we deal with it, aligned with a controversial topic, but in a humane way. As the bottom line is that the movie is about a feeling of us know and have: love,” he says.
The director and screenplay writer says that the short movie is just the first of several stories he heard and imagined in the penitentiary environment. In the second half of this year, he plans to start production of a new movie, which will also be set in a Brazilian prison.
"A Fábrica" is 15 minutes long and is a production by Grafo Audiovisual, a company established by Muritiba and two colleagues in the cinema area and RPC TV, affiliated to Globo TV, in Paraná. Grafo is headquartered in Curitiba, where the director lives. The reason for establishment of the company was the development of authorial cinema.
The short movie cost R$ 40,000 (US$ 22,000), which came from a Curitiba City Hall competition. Later, the team received R$ 15,000 (US$ 8,200) from RPC TV to complete the movie. The screenplay was written by Muritiba in 2010 and was approved in the summons. Pre-production then took two months; shooting was in three days, followed by two months in finalisation.
Participation in the Gulf Film Festival was an invitation, as was the case with several other festivals the movie was invited to participate in after winning an honorary mention from the jury of Clermont-Ferrand Festival, in France. "I have never been to an Arab country and am very excited with this trip there. Showing my movie in such a distant country, physically and culturally, will be unique,” he said.
In Dubai, "A Fábrica" will compete with other foreign productions for the best international movie award. Among the 42 awards already won by the short movie are best movie, director, actor, actress, screenplay, photography and honorary mentions.
The director is from the state of Bahia, but moved to São Paulo in 1998 and studied History at the University of São Paulo (USP). Muritiba is also a specialist in Communications and Culture from the Federal Technology University of Paraná and studied Cinema and TV at the Arts College of Paraná. He has already directed six short movies, one television movie and a long movie.
*Translated by Mark Ament
