Madame Satã

Karim Aïnouz’s feature debut MADAME SATÃ is a fresh and vibrant biopic inspired by the life of one of the most remarkable figures in Brazilian popular culture, João Francisco dos Santos (1900–1976), best known as Madame Satã. Dos Santos was at once a notorious black muscle street-fighting criminal, a legendary transvestite cabaret star, and a devoted father to seven adopted children, who pushed race and social boundaries at a volatile time. Born to slaves in the arid wastes of Northern Brazil and sold by his mother at the age of 7, he pursued his freedom on the mean streets of Lapa, Rio de Janeiro. A sordid bohemian underworld inhabited by pimps whores, bandits, and artists creates a background of violence and raw desire, where desperate dreams spring from poverty. Karim Aïnouz’s extraordinary portrait of Madame Satã (brilliantly performed by Lázaro Ramos) is a colorful and explosive injection of cinema that remains as one of the best Brazilian films of the 2000s. (Gustavo Beck)