Betania

Competition  Asian Premiere

Brazil | 2024 | Portuguese | 115 min | Drama/Family/Environment/Music | DCP

Synopsis

Betânia, the 65-year-old stalwart family matriarch, is on a turbulent ride on the ever-shifting sands of time. In the wake of her husband’s death, Betânia is forced to move back to the village where she was born, leaving behind a lifetime of memories and a simple, agrarian lifestyle without electricity on the cutting edge of a newborn Brazilian desert not so far from Amazon. Pushed by the ancestral sound of Maranhão, Betânia and her family fight to maintain balance and a sense of identity while tradition and modernity collide. Despite the imposing sand dunes, polluted water, financial hardship, generational quarrels, life finds a way, as it always does. Like the miraculous wildflowers found in the desert oases that punctuate the barren landscape, Betânia and her family eventually bloom into new vitality, while the world ends.

Credits