- Brazil
NEIGHBOURING SOUNDS
Synopsis
A street in a middle-class neighbourhood of Recife in north-eastern Brazil. Bia (Maeve Jinkings), a housewife, wages a small-scale war against the neighbours’ barking dog. João (Gustavo Jahn), an estate agent, falls in love with Sofia, while his cousin Dinho steals car radios from parked cars. Then Clodoaldo (Irandhir Santos) turns up, offering the residents protection through his private security firm. The fear he is meant to guard against is older than the neighbourhood – the film opens with archive footage of the sugar-cane plantations, whose order still operates beneath the residential towers. “Neighbouring Sounds” (O Som ao Redor) by Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil 2012.
In three parts – guard dogs, night watchmen, bodyguards – Mendonça Filho builds his first feature as a web of small incidents, and the soundtrack, the noise of the neighbourhood, carries the tension more than the plot does. The premiere took place in Rotterdam on 1 February 2012; the award for best film in Gramado followed, along with the Toronto Film Critics’ award for best first feature and a place among the year’s best films in the New York Times. The film was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2012.
Festival
Shown at the 2012 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.
