The best Zezé Motta’s movies

Quilombo dos Palmares was a real-life democratic society, created in Brazil in the 17th century. This incredibly elaborate (and surprisingly little-known) film traces the origins of Quilombo, which began as a community of freed slaves. The colony becomes a safe harbor for other outcasts of the world, including Indians and Jews. Ganga Zumba (Toni Tornado) becomes president of Quilombo, the first freely elected leader in the Western Hemisphere. Naturally, the ruling Portuguese want to subjugate Zumba and his followers, but the Quilombians are ready for their would-be oppressors. The end of this Brave New World is not pleasant, but the followers of Zumba and his ideals take to the hills, where they honor his memory to this day. Writer/director Carlos Diegues takes every available opportunity to compare the rise and fall of Quilombo with the state of affairs in modern-day Brazil.

Orfeu is a popular composer from a samba school. He lives in the favela and falls madly in love when he meets Euridice, a newcomer to the neighborhood. But the local drug boss Lucinho stands between them and will drastically change both their lives.

Based on the book O Fantástico Mistério de Feiurinha, the story combines real world and fantasy, dream and determination, with a surprising end, even for a fairy tale. The movie shows the fight of the fairy tale characters, now adults, who come together to recover the fable of the Little Ugly Princess, a beautiful Princess with a strange name, which only makes sense for those who know her story. The problem is that children and adults have forgotten the story of the Little Ugly Princess, which is as wonderful as other major fables for children. Cinderella brings together other fairy tale characters to meet the writer who keeps, lost in a small notebook, the Little Ugly Princess story.

Just when her family starts believing that she is dead, and that they can expect a rich heritage, Tieta returns from São Paulo to her native village in Bahia, which she had been forced to leave long ago because of some involvement with a goat herd. Believed to be fabulously rich - and nobody knows how - she brings to the great disappointment of her family a young step-daughter and heir. With the arrival of Tieta turmoil enters into the life of her family and their fellow villagers. Most particularly into the life of her nephew - promised to the Church - and the young aspiring mayor.

Filmed over a five-year period, Chronically Unfeasible dissects Brazilian problems, using six people who meet in a restaurant in São Paulo as models to illustrate political, sociological and economic disparities between Brazil's upper and lower classes.

Larissa competed for the Rio Military Police in search of the ideal of “protecting the citizen”.

Jubiabá is a French-Brazilian film based on the homonymous novel by Jorge Amado.

"Portraits and excerpts from Brazilian films from all times. Actors, directors and images that affirm cinema."

The filmmaker searches for his brother Max, who left his children without explanation. The brothers grew up in the Congo with their white father and Congolese mother. He visits their mother, who still lives in Kinshasa, and their father in Lisbon, as well as the extended family in France and Belgium. His search even takes him to Cambodia where Max was spotted. This fiction film is based on, and uses, the filmmaker's own family.