VERDICT: This deft and low-key drama uses fires raging in the Amazon to explore how a young woman is drawn to religion in search of some form of stability.
Towering plumes of smoke billow into the sky in the opening shot of Jasmin Tenucci’s August Sky, a disquieting short about a heavily pregnant nurse in Sao Paulo. Permeated by an ever-increasing sense of claustrophobia and a litany of portentous signs, the film uses the imagery of environmental disaster to cast modern Brazil as one on the precipice of calamity and, as a result, explores the allure of religion in the face of gradually suffocating powerlessness. The film first premiered at Cannes in 2021, garnering a special mention from the jury, and has since appeared at various festivals, most recently HollyShorts.
Lucia’s (Badu Morais) first indicator that something is deeply wrong is when a bird drops from the sky during her baby shower. This seems to be a direct result of the raging fires that news reports explain have been engulfing the Amazon for two weeks. However, further unease sets in when the heavily-pregnant Lucia’s grandmother insists that her baby has already been born, and Lucia begins to feel pains in her stomach despite assurances that the foetus is fine. Drawn to a woman at her grandmother’s neo-Pentecostal church (Lilian Regina), Lucia finds herself more and more taken with the organisation as the outside world grows ever more doom-laden.
The cinematography of Bruni Tiezzi is a key component in establishing the breath of fresh air that the church offers Lucia – it is presented in bright, welcoming splashes of colour that contrast dramatically with the glowing red darkness of a country overshadowed by smoke. Where just walking on the street is depicted as fraught and potentially dangerous, the moments at the religious services offer a safe space for Lucia to breathe and feel supported by – and able to support – other members of the congregation. Tenucci isn’t so much interested in presenting the adoption of faith as the answer to contemporary woes, as she is in delving into how someone might become involved in such a movement. Various films over the past few years have presented Brazil to similarly stifling effect, particularly for women, and August Sky offers a glimpse of light on one way that people are attempting to navigate the fug.
Director: Jasmin Tenucci
Screenplay: Jasmin Tenucci, Saim Sadiq
Cast: Badu Morais, Lilian Regina, Luci Pereira, Ernani Sanches
Producers: Ricardo Mordoch, Henrique Carvalhaes, Kari Ulfsson
Cinematography: Bruni Tiezzi
Editing: Brusi Olason, Fernanda Frotte
Music: Maria Beraldo
Production companies: Substância Filmes, Amordoch Filmes (Brazil)
Venue: HollyShorts
In Portuguese
15 minutes
