

A French genius wanders into Brazil and never really leaves.
A reconstruction of the experience that French thinker Lévi-Strauss had in Brazil at the beginning of his career. The anthropologist, who arrived here in 1935, was part of the second wave of European professors who came to teach at the newly created University of São Paulo.
Direction
Maia resurrects history through fragments and longing.
Cinematography
Brazil as myth, photographed like a fever dream.
Director
Maria Maia
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Lévi-Strauss's 1935 letters home complained about São Paulo's 'aggressive' modernity while he documented Indigenous cultures he barely spoke to.
The film's title references 'saudade'—a Portuguese word for longing with no exact translation, which Lévi-Strauss himself called 'the most beautiful word I know.'
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