Dry Ground Burning

Dry Ground Burning

Brazil / 2022 / 153 min. / NR

Just released from prison, Léa (Léa Alves Silva) returns home to the Brasilia favela of Sol Nascente and joins up with her half-sister Chitara (Joana Darc Furtado), the fearless leader of an all-female gang that steals and refines oil from underground pipes and sells gasoline to a clandestine network of motorcyclists. Living in constant opposition to Jair Bolsonaro’s fiercely authoritarian and militarized government, Chitara’s women claim the streets for themselves as a declaration of radical political resistance on behalf of ex-cons and the oppressed. A provocative portrait of Brazil’s dystopian contemporary moment that blends documentary with narrative fiction and genre elements, the latest film by Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós (Once There Was Brasilia) offers a unique vision of the country’s possible future.

  • Director

    Joana Pimenta, Adirley Queirós

  • Cast

    Joana Darc Furtado, Léa Alves Da Silva, Andreia Vieira, Débora Alencar, Gleide Firmino, Mara Alves

  • “The incendiary power of DRY GROUND BURNING, a feminist gangster movie from Brazil… Sodium-lit nightscapes filled with steely, gun-toting dames recall the glossy crime dramas of Michael Mann (HEAT)… I’m compelled to draw a connection between DRY GROUND BURNING and MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, two pyromaniacal dystopian westerns in which lawless women are not only their own saviors but everyone else’s, too. Critic’s Pick!”

    — Beatrice Loayza, The New York Times
  • "An astonishing work of survival and resilience... packs a pulpy punch, yet is also rooted in an urgent political reality."

    — Phuong Le, The Guardian
  • "A furious, queer, boisterous gangster epic that offers a view of the country from the outskirts and turns oppression into resistance."

    — Leonardo Goi, The Film Stage
  • “A meticulous blend of fact and fiction... layered with suggestions of Westerns, gangster films, and even science fiction, all rooted in the real contemporary.”

    Hyperallergic
  • “A politically incendiary ethnographic sci-fi…. In Dry Ground Burning, the future isn’t just female: it is Black, lesbian, profoundly matriarchal.”

    — Ela Bittencourt, Sight and Sound
  • "I have never seen a film quite like Dry Ground Burning."

    — Michael Sicinski, In Review Online
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