São Paulo – The Women’s Film Week in Amman, Jordan will feature the Brazilian movie Era o Hotel Cambridge (2017, 99 min) on Sunday (18). In an email interview with ANBA, the feature film’s director Eliane Caffé discussed the importance of depicting the reality of refugees in Brazil.
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The movie follows a group of refugee who live in a building in downtown São Paulo with squatters from the local homeless people’s movement. Amid the day-to-day threat of imminent eviction, the residents’ dramas, joys and differing worldviews unfold.
According to Caffé, mainstream media portrays the facts from the perspective of those in power, and this restricts and distorts the news, hence the importance of recounting the facts from a different viewpoint.
“The importance of showing how Arab [refugees] are living in Brazil today, through the eyes of those who seek a more just, humane world, is to ensure at least some awareness of the fact that the struggle taking place around the world today is not restricted to any specific peoples or geographical areas,” she said.
She said that “this is about a systemic fight and the need for historical change on a global scale.”
The filmmaker said the festival in itself is “a space of resistance,” since it “affords at least some degree of visibility to political conflicts at a time of war in Syria and Palestine, where thousands of people are dying.” She hopes the festival will inspire other similar initiatives.
The Women’s Film Week was created in 2013 to introduce Jordanian audiences to domestic- and foreign-made movies that deal with women’s rights and empowerment. The productions are not necessarily directed by women, but all of them tackle women-related issues. The Festival is open to men and women.
The Festival is held by UN Women – Jordan, in cooperation with the Royal Film Commission – Jordan and embassies. Its 6th edition began on Thursday (15) and will continue until Sunday (18), with free admission and featuring eight films, with sessions at 6pm and 8pm The Rainbow Theater in Amman’s Jabal Amman area.
The Brazilian film will be featured Sunday, at 8pm, with original audio in Portuguese and English subtitles.
Quick facts
Women’s Film Week
‘Era o Hotel Cambridge’ – screening on Sunday (18), 8 pm
The Rainbow Theater, Jebel Amman – Amman, Jordan
Find out more: http://www.film.jo/
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
