Cidade; campo

Joana (Fernanda Vianna) arrives in São Paulo to begin a new life, after the one she had was destroyed by a burst dam in her rural home. Flávia (Mirella Façanha) and Mara (Bruna Linzmeyer) take the opposite path: life is sufocating in the metropolis, so they move to the countryside in search of fresh air. Two tales of disturbing migration, two essays on the stark contrasts between the big city and the country. And yet there’s no way to stop one space from expanding into the other. Joana’s memories haunt her daily life, past and present images intermingle, the rural is heard in the urban and vice versa. Flávia and Mara are brave enough to try and reanimate a dying farm with their hands, but the soil is full of unexpected presences, sounds and spectres all around. The semicolon of the title is a figure of abrupt interruption, compared to the smoother pause created by the comma; it gives greater autonomy to each clause. Visually, it is akin a sudden movement, as if the hand had slipped while writing, or as if a fragile barrage were straining to burst. It cannot prevent one word from connecting to the next. The diferent worlds in Juliana Rojas’ films are also permeable. Their narrative detours and porous form have no better typographic expression. (Victor Guimarães)

In the presence of Juliana Rojas.