A film about nameless heroes in a war the world has wanted to ignore for too long. ›The First Fallen‹ celebrates life in the face of a deadly disease.
In Brazilian director Rodrigo de Oliveira’s second feature film, “trans” literally means overcoming boundaries: between genders, between eras, between fantasy and reality. It stands for the courage to break free from everything the world and our bodies want to pin us down to. To dare to go forward, out into the open, especially when the future seems closed. Suzano returns home to Brazil for New Year’s 1983, bringing with him a nameless disease. Or was it there already? The close-knit community surrounding a drag queen named Rose and a film director named Humberto seem to suspect that dark times are coming. They fight back, dance and sing all the more fervently in the city’s clubs.
De Oliveira ignores every would-be taboo and finds his very own voice somewhere between Derek Jarman, David Lynch, Xavier Dolan and telenovelas.
Director
Rodrigo de Oliveira received the Cinema Brazil Grand Prize for his documentary ›All Paulos in the World – Paulo José‹ (2017), which Gustavo Ribeiro co-directed. In addition to short films, he co-directed ›As Horas Vulgares‹ (2011) with Vitor Graize, which, like ›The First Fallen‹, is set in Vitória, Brazil.