IDFA: Morro Grande

After his childhood friend Vaguinho commits suicide, Rodolpho decides to devote a novel to his rebellious friend. Vaguinho was a leading figure in the punk movement of the farming community where they grew up, amid plantations drenched in pesticides.

The lush green hills surrounding the Brazilian town of Morro Grande look idyllic, but local farmers know this as a dark place. For generations, they have toiled on land that doesn’t belong to them. The farmers do the work, while large landowners and multinationals reap the profits. Writer Rodolpho grew up in Morro Grande, where he and two friends formed the punk rock band Formigas de Fogo, named after an invasive species of ant. They sang about exploitation and pesticides—one song was called “Chemical Colonialism.”

When his childhood friend Vaguinho takes his own life by drinking a Coca-Cola bottle filled with pesticide, Rodolpho decides to tell his story. He draws on stories passed down by others and photographs taken by another childhood friend Jerry, who has spent years documenting the slowly declining farming community with his analog Nikon camera. The more we learn about the enigmatic Vaguinho, the more the boundary between memory and imagination begins to blur. Perhaps not everything is true, but not a single word is a lie.