Coutinho’s documentary is a testament to a filmmaker who refuses to give up. In 1964 he began making a film about the assassination of João Pedro Teixeira, the leader of a rural cooperative who had been protesting against working conditions. Two years after the activist’s death, Coutinho set about making his film, using local people as far as possible to recreate the events leading up to the murder, including Elizabeth, Teixeira’s wife and her eight children. However, the shoot was shut down by the authorities, accusing the filmmakers of being Cuban revolutionaries, and most of the material was confiscated. Some takes survived and in the early 80s, with the political climate having changed, Coutinho returned to Pernambuco in the North East of the country with a double mission: to rediscover the characters from his film and, in a different sense, to complete the film he started making twenty years earlier. The result is an act of political resistance per excellence. The story of Teixeira is narrated by the rediscovered characters, whilst luminous black and white images from the sixties fill the screen. Coutinho finally tracks down Elisabeth, who has been living for years under a different name. Now the director gets to tell her story as well, how she protested against her husband’s death and also how she lost touch with almost all of her children. Coutinho tracks them down, going to all corners of Brazil to find them, and in this way the film is also a tragic portrait of the effects of the dictatorship on the country, the way in which it ripped families to pieces. Coutinho’s film is at once a portrait of a society emerging into the light after years of repression, and a fierce political diatribe, which stands alongside the work of directors such as Pontecorvo, Costa Gavras and Solanas.
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