The Second Mother

She will be doing exams for a prestigious architecture school. The barely literate mother and her well‑read daughter stand for some of the cultural and political changes Brazil has gone through over the last 25 years, particularly in the way the northeast of Brazil is seen through the lens of internal xenophobia and prejudice. I saw this sharp observation of class tension in an upper class shopping mall multiplex, the audience had been trained over so many years to identify with the well‑to‑do family in popular TV comedies released as films. Slowly, they came to realise with frozen grins on their faces that the heroes in this film are the employees, that the maid is not just comic relief and that the humour and the drama come from witnessing society change before our eyes.

-Kleber Mendonça Filho, Curator