Swing and Sway
Nov 16 2023
•1h 22m
•Documentary
Two friends respond to the challenges of the present by connecting through a playful provocation. Separated by America’s hemispheres, one in Brazil and the other in the U.S, they communicate strictly through video letters during a year. As a rule, each letter is formally and thematically inspired by a woman experimental filmmaker. As life unfolds, they express on film what they want to share with each other: the experience of being a recent immigrant, the expectations of political elections in both countries, their fears and hopes, all while observing the different women around them.
Cast
See all
Nava Mau
Self
Recommendations
See all
The Wind Blows the Border
On the violent border between Brazil and Paraguay, a war is being waged around the expansion of agribusiness. On one side sits lawyer Luana Ruiz, the heiress to contested lands and one of the strongest supporters of president Jair Bolsonaro. Ruiz, like other ruralistas—rural wealthy elites and agribusiness producers who advocate for Indigenous cultural annihilation—has become empowered and her ideas of hate have flourished under Bolsonaro's anti-Indigenous agenda. On the other side sits teacher, Guarani-Kaiowá leader and activist Alenir Ximendes, embodying powerful Indigenous resistance and communal ideals. Having personally suffered losses at the hands of the ruralistas, Ximendes emerges as a powerful force against Ruiz, fighting for the protection of her community, their lands and Indigenous constitutional rights. This film contains sensitive images and dialogue in its portrayal of this urgent struggle for sovereignty.

Threshold
An autobiographical documentary made by a mother who follows the gender transition of her adolescent son: between 2016 and 2019 she interviews him addressing the conflicts, certainties and uncertainties that pervade him in a deep search for his identity. At the same time, the mother, revealed through a firstperson narration and by her voice behind the camera that talks to her son, also goes through a process of transformation required by the situation that life presents her with by breaking old paradigms, facing fears and dismantling prejudices.

Q
New York police are bemused by reports of a giant flying lizard that has been spotted around the rooftops of New York, until the lizard starts to eat people. An out-of-work ex-con is the only person who knows the location of the monster's nest and is determined to turn the knowledge to his advantage, but will his gamble pay off or will he end up as lizard food?

Badhaai Ho
A 25-year-old man tries to suppress his embarrassment when his mother announces that she is pregnant.