Director Walter Salles on "Central do Brasil"

Few countries have suffered as many traumatic changes in the last thirty years as Brazil. A late industrialization created a huge wave of internal migration that, in turn, brought chaos to the cities, unprepared to accommodate so many new arrivals. The absence of land reform and successive droughts in the northern states led to a continuous exodus to the south of the country.

In the 1970’s, millions of migrants from the northeast abandoned their homes, families and cultural traditions, attracted by the illusion of an economic miracle announced by the military government. But promises were unfulfilled, unemployment rates soared, and so did violence in the overpopulated Brazilian cities of the south.

In the beginning of the 90’s, the country plunged even further into a state of chaos. After recently-elected president Collor announced an outrageous new plan to restructure the economy, more than 800,000 young Brazilians opted for exile, in search of the opportunity denied them in their homeland. For the first time since its discovery 500 years ago, Brazil became a country of emigration. This was the underlying theme of my previous film, "Foreign Land", about a generation in crisis, lost in a country which was, itself, unsure of its identity.

A few years have passed. We are now on the verge of a new century, and somehow, the country has matured. We know that the economic miracle that would immediately solve all our structural problems was a fallacy. We also know that mass exile is not a possible solution. We are finally confronted with ourselves, with what we really are, so distant from the image created by official statistics and by national television, entities that have both been so efficient in controlling and defining Brazil’s recent past.

Today, an important quest is surfacing : the desire to find another country, one that may be simpler and less glorious than previously announced, but aims to be more compassionate and human. A country where the possibility of a certain innocence still remains.

This latent desire to rediscover a country, to redefine ourselves, coincides with the rebirth of Brazilian cinema, with the necessity to continue a cinematic tradition that was brutally interrupted for political and economic reasons - perhaps because it depicted faithfully what took place in Brazil, in contrast to what was shown on television.

"Central do Brasil" aims to talk about this country searching for its own roots. This is a film about a boy wanting to find his own identity (Josué), but is also about people striving to maintain a contact with their past (the illiterate migrants who dictate letters to Dora).

centraldobrasil@videofilmes.com.br